Taxi Driver (Autumn/Winter 1993) is the second collection by British designer Alexander

McQueen for his eponymous fashion house. It was named after the 1976 film Taxi Driver, and his
father, who was a London taxicab driver. McQueen developed the collection following his 1992
graduation from the art school Central Saint Martins. At the time he was unemployed and seeking a
job in the fashion industry; although he was reluctant to launch his own company, he worked on
designs to pass the time. The collection included experimental techniques and silhouettes, most
notably the bumster trouser, whose extremely low waist exposed the top of the intergluteal cleft.

In lieu of a traditional fashion show, Taxi Driver was exhibited in a room at the Ritz
Hotel during London Fashion Week in March 1993. McQueen was one of six young designers
funded by the British Fashion Council that year. Aided by magazine editor Isabella Blow, who took it
upon herself to promote McQueen, the collection garnered positive reviews. When the exhibition
ended, McQueen packed the clothing into bin bags, went clubbing, and left the bags hidden in the
rubbish behind the club. When he returned the next day, the rubbish had been removed. Nothing
remains of the collection.

Background
British designer Alexander McQueen (born Lee Alexander McQueen) was known in the fashion
industry for his imaginative, sometimes controversial, designs and dramatic fashion shows.[1] The
son of a London taxicab driver and a teacher, he grew up in one of the poorer neighborhoods in
London's East End.[2] He began his career in fashion as an apprentice with Savile
Row tailors Anderson & Sheppard before briefly joining Gieves & Hawkes as a pattern cutter.[3][4] His
work on Savile Row earned him a reputation as an expert tailor.[1]

In October 1990, at the age of 21, McQueen began the eighteen-month masters-level course in
fashion design at Central Saint Martins (CSM), a London art school.[5][6] McQueen met a number of
his future collaborators at CSM, including Simon Ungless, with whom he later lived.[7][8] He graduated
with his master's degree in fashion design in 1992. His graduation collection, Jack the Ripper Stalks
His Victims, was bought in its entirety by magazine editor Isabella Blow, who became his mentor and
his muse.[9]

Creation of label and collection

Label
Following his graduation from CSM in 1992, McQueen's friends wanted him to start his own label.
He was concerned about the difficulty involved in launching a new business, and was more
interested in landing a job with an existing fashion house.[10] He had interviews, but nothing came of
them. At times, he worked as Blow's assistant, but mainly subsisted on unemployment
benefits.[11][12] In the meantime, he spent his time experimenting with designs, working closely with
housemate Ungless, who was focused on prints.[13][14] Eventually McQueen ended up with enough
pieces to call a collection, decided to launch a small design label, and found himself in need of a
name for his nascent company.[14]

McQueen chose to design under his middle name, rather than his given name of Lee, resulting in the
brand name Alexander McQueen. Blow was fond of taking credit for this decision, saying that
Alexander was a more aristocratic-sounding name than Lee. McQueen claimed it was his idea to
use a different name so that the unemployment benefits he was claiming as Lee McQueen would not
get cut off.[12][15] For the clothing tag, he re-used a concept from Jack the Ripper: clear plastic squares
with locks of his own hair inside. This referenced the practice of Victorian-era prostitutes selling locks
of hair as well as the general practice of people keeping a lock of hair as a memento or trophy.[12]
Collection
A bumster-cut skirt from Highland Rape (Autumn/Winter 1995), demonstrating the extremely
low cut which exposes the intergluteal cleft
Taxi Driver comprised some 26 pieces: 13 brand-new designs, in addition to concepts reworked
from Jack the Ripper and other miscellaneous items.[16] Many designs featured the sharp tailoring
that became a McQueen signature.[17] The clothes in the collection were made with unconventional
techniques and materials, partially because McQueen and Ungless could rarely afford to buy decent
fabric.[13] McQueen used liquid latex to finish the edges of some garments rather than sewing a hem.
He made a tank top of two layers of a clear plastic shower curtain, with partridge feathers wedged
inside. Another garment had feathers lined up vertically around the collar, obscuring the
face.[18][19] The feathers were supplied by Ungless, whose father was a gamekeeper.[20] Ungless
created a series of prints for the collection from photos of missing and murdered people, rendered in
black and white on cheap cotton; this became a skater skirt and a top. He printed an image
of Robert De Niro as Travis Bickle from the 1976 film Taxi Driver on grey taffeta, from which
McQueen made a tailored jacket or vest.[a][18][19]

The most significant concept in the collection is the bumster trouser, a brand-new design whose
extremely low waist exposed the top of the intergluteal cleft.[18] Creating a completely new silhouette
is a rarity in fashion, and a significant achievement.[18] McQueen later described the bumsters as an
effort to demonstrate how the cut of a garment could radically change the appearance of the
body.[21] The other individual item of note was called the "Scarlet Pimpernel coat", priced at £800.
This was a grey coatdress with a jewelled collar and a cut right down the back that showed the
wearer's whole spine.[18] The collar alone took two weeks of work.[22]

The collection's title references both the film Taxi Driver and McQueen's taxicab driver father,
although he only admitted to the latter much later.[18][23][24] Andrew Groves, a fellow designer and early
boyfriend of McQueen's, believed it was named to honour McQueen's father.[15] Ungless dismissed
this idea, recalling that the collection was named after the film, because he and McQueen thought
"De Niro looked incredibly fuckable" as Travis Bickle.[18]

Sales efforts and exhibition

A collection designed solely around the female form and, by the use of proportion, accentuating parts of the
woman’s anatomy to create a new shape.

Hi-tech fabrics coincide with hi-tech visuals and combine with classics of bygone years such as fifties
parallels, cut just above the ankle, and Korean line frock coats with Chesterfield collars, beaded with the
scarlet pimpernel.

No restriction pure contortion.

Alexander McQueen Taxi Driver overview[25]

Blow had connections with fashion retailers, and she took him to various buyers hoping to secure
orders.[12] Joan Burstein, co-owner of Browns, a London boutique, recalled that the pieces were
brought to her in a bin bag. She turned the clothing down, but told Blow that McQueen had talent
worth working on.[12] McQueen's friends Cressida Pye and Alice Smith, who had known him since
1992, had opened a fashion recruitment agency – essentially a matchmaking service that attempted
to match designers with jobs at existing fashion houses. In an effort to promote McQueen's work to
buyers, they held showings of Taxi Driver at their agency in Covent Garden in late February
1993.[b][16][25][27]
Because of the slumping economy, few designers presented runway shows during London Fashion
Week in early March 1993. The British Fashion Council provided funding for new designers to exhibit
their collections at the Ritz Hotel in London in lieu of fashion shows, and McQueen was one of six
successful applicants.[28][29] Journalist Dana Thomas described the exhibition as "a bit of a ramshackle
circus".[12] McQueen had no money for staging, so the clothing was simply hung on whatever
hangers he could find.[30][31] He neglected his own appearance, meeting buyers and journalists in
clothes that were torn or paint-splattered, and was often defensive when people made comments
about the unusual designs.[31] Once again, Blow took charge of promotion, corralling exhibition
visitors into seeing McQueen's display.[30][31]

Alice Smith wore a feather-collared bustier from the collection for a photo shoot with The Daily
Telegraph in early March.[32] On the taxi ride home, it shed feathers everywhere. Neither Smith nor
McQueen wanted to deal with it, so she left it behind in the cab.[33]

On the day the exhibition ended, McQueen and Ungless packed the garments up into bin bags.
They went went clubbing to celebrate; reluctant to pay the cloakroom fees, they hid the bags among
the rubbish behind one of the clubs, started drinking, and promptly forgot about them. By the time
McQueen returned the next morning, rubbish collectors had removed everything.[26][34] Nothing
remains of the collection.[35]

Reception and legacy

Most fashion designers strive their entire career to come up with something "new" and never achieve it.
McQueen did it in his first collection out of school.
Dana Thomas, Gods and Kings[18]

Lucinda Alford at The Observer wrote that the collection demonstrated McQueen's pattern-cutting
skills with "some of the most interesting cuts around", and said that some of the garments, including
the Scarlet Pimpernel coat, "could be works of art in their own right".[36] She noted the combination
of historicist references and futuristic concepts; McQueen relied on both throughout his
career.[36][37][38] Nilgin Yusuf at The Sunday Times said "McQueen is one of a new breed of British
designers strong on craftsmanship and with a developing business sense who herald a renaissance
in the much maligned British fashion industry."[22] Iain R. Webb of The Times agreed, listing
McQueen as one of a number of new designers whose "designs are unequivocably of today; their
names should be world famous tomorrow".[39]

Writing in 2009, fashion journalist Sarah Mower recalls the Taxi Driver collection as the moment
British fashion started to recover from a slump that began with the Black Monday stock market crash
of 1987.[40] Curator Andrew Bolton remembered the bumster as "one of the garments that, very early
on, would make his reputation as this provocateur".[41] Journalist Susannah Frankel agreed; in a 2015
essay about McQueen's early years, she wrote that the collection "showcased many of the signature
traits with which McQueen would make his name".[8] Academic Chris McWade argued that Taxi
Driver had been integrated into the mythology that surrounded McQueen: the complete loss of such
an early collection "adds to the spectral quality and sense of loss that overarches his identity as a
public figure".[42]

When the Metropolitan Museum of Art began arranging the retrospective Alexander McQueen:
Savage Beauty, they contacted Smith in the hope that she still owned the feathered bustier from
the Telegraph shoot.[33] Although nothing remains of the clothing, a collection overview and a price
list from the archive of early McQueen employee Ruti Danan were auctioned in 2020.[43] The
overview sold for $250, while the price list sold for $2,505.[25][44]