Last week I finally made it to “Savage Beauty,” the Alexander McQueen show at the Met, which is just as sensational as everyone says it is.  I’ve seen other great fashion exhibits, like the Met’s AngloMania in 2006, which featured several McQueen ensembles, and this year’s Balenciaga retrospective at the Spanish Institute, but I’ve never been moved the way I was by this one.  McQueen’s clothes are very literally fantastic; they evoke fear, pride, lust, violence, amazement and, because of his death last year, incredible sadness.

To see McQueen’s clothes in person is something different than seeing them in photos and videos from runway presentations.  His shows were so deeply theatrical (with inventive makeup, styling, lighting, choreography and narratives) that the dazzling technical virtuosity and dreamy baroque sensuality of the garments weren’t easily apparent.  Even when his work moved far from what high fashion is (and what clothing is), as with his punkish “tribal” collections, it possessed an astonishing precision in both image and execution.  He wasn’t flailing around or experimenting.  He was pulling visions out from the air and into the world.

Long before the House of Balenciaga got hot for its studded, streamered leather handbags and its Space-Age Warrior Princess minidresses, it was reknown for the hyper-elegant creations of its founder, couturier Cristobal Balenciaga.  The exhibit “Balenciaga: Spanish Master” at the Queen Sofia Spanish Institute on Park Avenue makes clear how little the image of the current brand has to do with Balenciaga’s inspired, rigorous, dream-like garments.

Balenciaga highlighted a woman’s neck and downplayed everything below with softly sculpted garments that hung away from the body.  His gowns and jackets create shapes that are architecturally structured but still tethered to the body like force fields.  One signature feature is an integral or removable cape, derived from a priest’s or matador’s coat, that masks and embellishes the wearer’s shoulders and arms.  The image of women sliding about in these caped garments, often handless and armless, is striking, surreal and graceful.  The dresses are like gorgeous cocoons.