To the astonishment of the Met, the McQueen show produced the busiest opening day its history

what do Alexander McQueen, Vincent Van Gogh and Picasso share? At first glance, not a lot. But this summer they have become unexpectedly linked. For the past three months, the mighty Metropolitan Museum in New York has been running a retrospective exhibition of the work of McQueen, the late British fashion designer. When this show first opened, on May 4, the Met thought it would be quite a low-key affair. Although McQueen was made a CBE and won four British fashion awards in his lifetime he was never a household name in the US, partly because his fantastic couture designs were almost impossible to wear.

The collection on offer at the Met right now, for example, features frocks made from dead flowers and pheasant feathers, antlers poking through lace, clutches with skull motifs, pictures of bare-breasted women in ripped lace, and a display called “Highland Rape”. Ralph Lauren, this is not. Nor, for that matter, is it anything like the Met’s last big costume show, which featured Chanel.