Alexander McQueen & Björk

This epic relationship began when Icelandic native Björk released her fourth record, Homogenic in 1997 – and the image that held the album cover got nearly as much press as the music. The “elfin chanteuse” her fans had come to love had transformed into a different almost unrecognizable creature; a creature that, today we know was borne from her collaborative conversations with then, 26-year old Alexander McQueen. “When I went to Alexander McQueen, I explained to him the person who wrote these songs—someone who was put into an impossible situation, so impossible that she had to become a warrior…a warrior who had to fight not with weapons but with love.” The respective work of these two creative geniuses seemed to discuss similar themes of man, nature and machine. The two went on to collaborate several times: McQueen directed Björk’s video for “Alarm Call,” and in 2003, the pair reunited for a Fashion Rocks! performance, where she sported a McQueen gown and crystal mask for the finale of her performance. McQueen was also responsible for Björk’s fantastical bell-covered dress worn in the 2004 video “Who Is It?” And in a 2003 conversation between Björk and McQueen with Index magazine, he said of his own designs that sound like it could have come from either virtuoso, “my work is always in some way directed by nature. It needs to connect with the earth. Things that are processed and reprocessed lose their substance.”