Lee Alexander McQueen & Ann Ray: Rendez-Vous Exhibition

Developed and produced by Barrett Barrera Projects, the traveling exhibition "Lee Alexander McQueen & Ann Ray: Rendez-Vous" explores the thirteen-year friendship and intimate creative collaboration between the late British designer Lee Alexander McQueen and French photographer Ann Ray, who McQueen personally selected to document his process and the behind-the-scenes experience of his runway shows.

The exhibition features 60 fine art photographs taken by Ray, reflecting her unique relationship with McQueen between the years of 1997 and 2010, alongside garments McQueen gifted to her over the course of their work together. The exhibition also features over 50 key McQueen pieces from Barrett Barrera Projects’ collection, the largest private collection of McQueen’s work.

During the thirteen years Ann Ray spent working alongside McQueen as the only in-house photographer for the designer, she took over 32,000 photographs that now reside in the private collection of Barrett Barrera Projects. The photographs displayed throughout the exhibition were selected and organized into thematic chapters by Ray herself. The fashion objects featured throughout the exhibition follow the arc of Alexander McQueen’s professional life: his early, mid-, and late career, as well as his final, posthumous collection. The only survey of McQueen's work arranged chronologically, these pieces—including ready-to-wear, one-off samples, and extraordinary examples of haute couture—trace the evolution and refinement of McQueen’s singular artistic voice and evince his virtuosic gifts as a tailor.