Ian Bonhôte
Filmmakers Ian Bonhôte and
Peter Ettedgui have created a portrait of McQueen that is intimate, deeply respectful and multi-faceted, featuring one-on-one interviews with family, friends and colleagues, previ- ously lost video of McQueen himself, as well as footage from his famed live runway shows: “Jack the Ripper Stalks His Victims,” his 1992 graduate college collection; “Highland Rape,” his most controversial early show; “Search for the Golden Fleece,” and his first collection for fashion giant Givenchy; “Voss,” an exploration of beauty and madness.
Ian Bonhôte sat down withThe Rage Monthly to discuss the documentary’s highlights, as well as the pivotal moments in the designer’s life and career before his untimely death at 40-years-old.
I’ll start with where you came up with your initial idea to do a biopic on Lee Alexander McQueen? It wasn’t the most glamorous,
the way we came to the film. Lee Alexander McQueen moved to London in the ‘90s and became such a relevant figure at the time. He was one of those guys who wasn’t like other designers, because he collaborated with music and had a broader design
alexander mcqueen
ideology. He was obviously prominent in fashion, but it was at a time where there was a sort of democratization around consuming fashion. It wasn’t just about Vogue anymore. There were a lot of new magazines in the UK:iD, The Face, Dazed and Confused—he was one of the darlings for all of those guys—he was the same generation so he sort of grew up with them. The fashion leaders of some of those magazines were also some of his stylists, et cetera, et cetera, so they and the public would consume and live off his creativity constantly. As a young creative person having
immigrated to the U.K., that always stuck with me over the years. Some cool producers called me up having come out of a meeting and said, “Look, they were potentially talking about doing a McQueen film.” They didn’t end up making the film with us, but asked if I would be interested in it. I of course said, “Yes, definitely.” I then got in touch with Peter [Ettedgui] and he agreed and we started brainstorming. Peter went away and wrote and I created a sort of visual package for it and we went to pitch it. It wasn’t until then that we realized that people really wanted it. We managed to raise the finances and then we went on to make the film. There are several things that were really striking to me. One was all the archival footage you managed to include. I mean was that all
AUGUST 2018 | RAGE monthly 33
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