( CNN ) You would be pressed to find a designer who appealed to the imagination as much as Alexander McQueen . A favorite with A-listers and fashion editors alike , he was renowned for his Gothic sensibilities , innovative textiles ( think shells , horns and hair ) and highly conceptual runway shows , as well as his bad boy antics behind the scenes . ( Along with the usual drinks , drugs and parties , he once claimed to have stitched profanities into the lining of a jacket for Prince Charles . ) Five years after his death , interest in the designer has n't waned , least of all in his home town of London , where , starting this month , he 's being commemorated with an extensive , expensive retrospective at the Victoria and Albert Museum . Alexander McQueen : Savage Beauty , a re-staging of the 2011 exhibition at New York 's Metropolitan Museum of Art , summarizes and contextualizes McQueen 's 18-year career through an elaborate display of 244 garments and accessories . `` Savage Beauty at the V & A is the largest and most ambitious fashion exhibition the museum has ever staged , '' said curator Claire Wilcox at a press preview . The V & A has already sold 70,000 advanced tickets , and extended the exhibition by two weeks to meet demand . At the Met , Savage Beauty attracted over 660,000 visitors by the end of its four-month run , making it one of the museum 's top 10 exhibitions of all time , up there with a King Tut stop in 1978 and a Mona Lisa loan in 1963 . Bringing Savage Beauty to London can be seen as a `` homecoming , '' as it was described by V & A director Martin Roth at the press preview , if not an act of repatriation . The son of cab driver and a school teacher , Alexander `` Lee '' McQueen grew up in London 's East End . After dropping out of school at 16 , he honed his tailoring skills on Savile Row , graduated with an MA in fashion design from the city 's prestigious Central Saint Martins college , and used the V & A 's archives to research his collections . He once said of London : `` It 's where my heart is , and where I get my inspiration . '' That love was largely reciprocated . In 2011 , thousands of British devotees petitioned to have Savage Beauty brought to London after its spectacular New York debut . Fashion journalist Melanie Rickey was one of the most vocal proponents . A longtime fan , she has coauthored the upcoming release Inferno : Alexander McQueen ( Laurence King ) , a coffee table book of interviews and images from photographer Kent Baker , which documents March 1996 collection Dante . `` I was agitated because ( Savage Beauty ) really is meant to be in his hometown , '' Rickey says . `` Everything about him is London , so to not have it in London would have been a crime . '' Along with hounding the brand 's corporate honchos and the V & A itself , Rickey started an online petition to have the exhibition brought to the city , and instigated the Twitter hashtag # BringMcQueenExhibitionHome . `` It 's like the ( Elgin ) Marbles : They 're probably a lot more powerful in Greece than they are sitting in the British Museum . '' Ultimately , such advocacy may have been unnecessary . According to Kate Bethune , senior exhibition research assistant for Savage Beauty , it had been Roth 's ambition to bring the exhibition to London since he assumed the directorship in September 2011 . The V & A exhibition , which was announced last April , even begins with a newly added London gallery dedicated to McQueen 's roots in the city and his early shows . Curators called on Sam Gainsbury , who produced all of McQueen 's shows from 1996 on , to act as the exhibition 's creative director and bring McQueen 's pieces to life . `` A lot of ( McQueen 's ) colleagues say he started his collections with the concept of a show , '' Bethune says . `` He always wanted people to have a strong reaction to what he was going . '' The most theatrical highlights include the Romantic Primitivism gallery , covered with fake bones like an ossuary , and a blacked-out room where a Kate Moss hologram floats in a diaphanous dress , trapped in a glass pyramid . The room-sized Cabinet of Curiosities has 27 screens showing moments of his most imaginative runway shows : women walk on water , a model 's gown is spray-painted by robotic arms , a church is converted into a catwalk . But Bethune believes the real draw will be the groundbreaking pieces made from unconventional materials , which blur the line between fashion and art . Fairytale gowns feature throughout and there 's a whole section dedicated to McQueen 's tailoring skills , but it 's the garments made from razor clam shells , pheasant feathers , and synthetic hair ; or embellished with impala horns and baby crocodile heads that really standout . The accessories -- extravagant headpieces , Swarovski mesh chain mail , impossible shoes -- seem like sculptures . `` McQueen was an artist whose medium of expression was fashion , '' she says . `` He absolutely changed the way we look at fashion . '' Alexander McQueen : Savage Beauty runs from March 14 - August 2 , 2015 at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London . For more information , visit www.vam.ac.uk/savagebeauty .
Alexander McQueen : Savage Beauty has arrived at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London . The exhibition showcases the late designers most memorable pieces . Hide Caption