The Museum of Savage Beauty: Necklace

Senior Research Assistant Kate Bethune describes the remarkable pheasant claw and pearl necklace from Alexander McQueen's What a Merry Go Round collection. Shaun Leane for Alexander McQueen, What a Merry Go Round, Autumn/Winter 2001. http://www.vam.ac.uk/museumofsavagebeauty/ Transcript: This necklace is classic McQueen because it fuses beauty and the grotesque with this incredulous combination of expensive Tahitian pearls and vulgar, lacquered pheasant claws, and these claws clatter around the neck of the wearer. It has a very Gothic feel to it and it’s actually quite an uncomfortable piece when you’re up close to it because you are at once repulsed by these vulgar pheasant claws, yet at the same time you can’t help but be drawn to the beauty of the piece as a whole. And these beautiful strands of pearls sway and mimic the 1920s flapper style dresses that were part of the collection that the piece was made for, and actually from a distance the pheasant claws appear quite soft and almost fur like. This necklace is another of the many examples where McQueen propelled his collaborators to push their creative horizons. Shaun Leane was actually trained as a jeweller and a fine goldsmith and he was used to rendering his designs in precious metals and precious stones but here he found himself having to dry out pheasant claws for this necklace. It’s also another example of memento mori, which is a concept that McQueen was fascinated by and McQueen referenced memento mori via sk