McQueen’s honours
The revered designer’s enduring legacy continues to inspire fresh artistic talent
Alexander McQueen was fearless when it came to pushing the boundaries of imagination and creativity. To produce his exotic, otherworldly clothes, the designer looked beyond the traditional realms of couture to alternative crafts, from jewellers to woodcutters, taxidermists to glass-blowers. ‘Part of his ability to invent so freely was his openness to partnering with all kinds of creatives,’ says Trino Verkade, McQueen’s first employee, who went on to work across all areas of his business. ‘He bounced off people. He didn’t see barriers.’
It was this love of cross-disciplinary collaboration that inspired McQueen to set up the Sarabande Foundation in 2007, a charitable trust that provides financial and practical support to fashion, jewellery and fine-art students. Spearheaded by Verkade, it offers six bursaries a year and 12 subsidised studio spaces in former Victorian stables in Haggerston. Previous beneficiaries include the designers Molly Goddard and Craig Green, both of whom have returned to give talks and meet students.
‘The exposure to designers, artists and curators is amazing,’ says the Dutch artist Puck Verkade (surprisingly, no relation to Trino), a current resident who has shown her videos and installations in Lisbon and San Francisco since she joined Sarabande last year. ‘Having a support system that puts us in contact with established brands is incredible,’ agrees Michaela Yearwood-Dan, one of the studio’s newest tenants, who paints abstract botanical diptychs in luminous oils, and sold her first work here to a casual visitor within a week of her arrival.
Another graduate, Hendrickje Schimmel, describes her first year at the foundation as a crucial ‘incubation period’ before entering the real world. ‘You have so much time and space to truly develop your practice with the support of your peers,’ she says. Schimmel makes sculptural and wearable pieces of art, often using found and recyclable garments that range from discarded socks to her father’s treasured painting jeans.
‘We encourage people to do it their own way – we don’t want cookie cut-outs,’ says Trino Verkade. ‘We’ll support you if you want to do things differently.’ Revolutionary that he was, Alexander McQueen would surely approve. Sarabande Foundation (www.sarabandefoundation.org)