The coca plant is at the center of daily life and ritual practice for Indigenous people throughout South America. When Arhuaco men meet, for example, they exchange handfuls of coca leaves instead of shaking hands. Chewed with lime powder (calcium carbonate, which acts as a catalyst) created from burned seashells, it has a mild stimulating effect that aids focus and thinking, but not the highly intoxicating effects of chemically refined cocaine. As ethnographer Wade Davis has noted, “comparing coca to cocaine is like comparing potatoes to vodka.” 
  

Works from all over ancient Colombia show male and female figures seated in pensive poses, some chewing coca leaves and some with eyes half-closed, as if deep in thought. Known as pensadores (thinkers), they are responsible for conceiving (understanding) and maintaining balance in the world. “To sit is an invitation to the synchrony of energies,” observes Jaison Pérez Villafaña, an Arhuaco elder. “The banquito (bench) supports you while you think. It helps you ground what you have not understood. You are inviting yourself to solve a problem that worries you.”

McQueen—who once stated that “the basis for anything I do is craftsmanship”—consistently looked to his formative years apprenticing on Savile Row when tailoring each of his collections. Two dresses from the Untitled (Golden Showers) (Spring/Summer 1998-99) collection and one dress from Dante (Fall/Winter 1996-97) utilize traditional wool suiting, adapted with net cutouts and piecing to reveal, conceal, and highlight parts of the body.

References to the early twentieth century and the Edwardian fashions in the film Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975) are evident in two McQueen looks from It’s Only a Game (Spring/Summer 2005). The high, fitted collars and vertical pintucks of silk net and lace of dresses from the early 1900s inspired McQueen’s jackets, with the grosgrain ribbon typically found inside historic boned bodices acting here as an exposed waist closure.

This sequin dress––from a collection memorializing Isabella Blow, one of McQueen’s closest confidantes, champions, and muses—is paired here with a hat, previously owned by Blow, that was crafted by their mutual friend and frequent collaborator, Philip Treacy. Deceptively simple, McQueen’s dress design displays his gift for imbuing the technical with the personal: On the wearer’s left side, opaque and translucent gold-colored beads are precisely embedded between vertical rows of black sequins to produce a faithful portrait of Blow.

Here, McQueen skillfully used curved seams and quilting to create a down-filled coat that recalls an iconic work by another master of twentieth-century pattern cutting, Charles James. His 1937 eiderdown and satin jacket, photographed for Harper’s Bazaar in October 1938, is a notable precursor to other high-end “puffer” styles that have been fashionable ever since.

McQueen’s Spring/Summer 2009 collection Natural Dis-tinction, Un-Natural Selection was a pioneering exploration of digital print design that significantly contributed to the widespread (and ongoing) adoption of this technique in the fashion industry. Digitally manipulated images of crystals patterning this pair of dresses exemplify the collection’s themes—and McQueen’s fascination—with the interplay between the natural and the artificial.

This checkerboard suit from Scanners at right flaunts Alexander McQueen’s advanced cutting abilities: Curved or squared, on the grain or bias, the pattern pieces are meticulously arranged to create a vibrant optical illusion, visually sculpting the body. His technique—first honed during Savile Row apprenticeships—can be compared to that of renowned American designer Gilbert Adrian, who similarly excelled in the graphic pattern placement of tailored suits at left.