The dimming or extinction of the Sun has been a recurring theme. The earliest such stories were inspired by the assumption that the heat and light of the Sun were products of combustion, and that the fuel sustaining it would eventually run out. Physicist Lord Kelvin estimated in 1862 that the Sun would fade within a few million years, a timeframe that was later incorporated in stories by Camille Flammarion and H. G. Wells, among others. In Flammarion's 1894 novel Omega: The Last Days of the World, humanity survives an encounter with a comet but succumbs to the dimming of the Sun thousands of years later, while the time traveller in Wells's 1895 novel The Time Machine discovers a cooled and reddened Sun over a barren Earth in the far future. Similarly, stories about the end of the world involving the death of the Sun were written in the early 1900s by among others George C. Wallis, whose 1901 short story "The Last Days of Earth" depicts the last survivors leaving a frozen Earth for a potentially habitable planet in another planetary system, and William Hope Hodgson, whose 1908 novel The House on the Borderland describes one character's vision of the destruction of both the Earth and Sun.
By the 1920s, the combustion hypothesis had fallen out of favour. The new explanation was that the Sun was fuelled by nuclear fusion, an understanding that was pioneered by the work of astrophysicist Arthur Eddington. As a result, science fiction authors started incorporating much longer solar lifespans in their stories, with J. B. S. Haldane's 1927 work "The Last Judgment" and Olaf Stapledon's 1930 novel Last and First Men both outlining the future evolution of humanity throughout millions of years of variation in solar luminosity. Stories depicting the Sun waning nevertheless kept appearing, such as Clark Ashton Smith's stories about the fictional future continent Zothique starting with the 1932 short story "The Empire of the Necromancers", and Jack Vance's Dying Earth series starting with the 1950 anthology The Dying Earth which also gave its name to the dying Earth subgenre of science fiction. Nat Schachner's 1934 short story "When the Sun Dies" describes the entire Earth freezing over in the 1980s as a result of a reduction in solar activity, and in Arthur C. Clarke's 1949 short story "History Lesson", future Venusians find humanity extinct due to the environmental changes brought about by the Sun fading. Clarke also touched upon the subject in the 1938 poem "The Twilight of the Sun" and the 1979 novel The Fountains of Paradise. In a variation on the theme, Fritz Leiber's 1951 short story "A Pail of Air" depicts Earth having been pulled away from the gravitational influence of the Sun and thus turned into a rogue planet, with a climate so cold that air has frozen and needs to be collected and thawed to turn it gaseous and breathable. Edmond Hamilton's 1934 short story "Thundering Worlds" sees all the planets leaving the Solar System to find a new star as the Sun dies, while his 1963 comic book story "Superman Under the Red Sun" depicts Superman travelling into the far future and losing his superpowers as a result of the aging red Sun. Eric C. Williams's 1965 short story "Sunout" depicts scientists reacting to the realization that the Sun is about to go out and they are powerless to do anything about it. In the 2019 film The Wandering Earth, the death of the Sun prompts humanity to relocate the entire Earth to a new planetary system.
A handful of stories describe efforts to reignite the fading Sun. In Clark Ashton Smith's 1954 short story "Phoenix" (written c. 1935), this is accomplished by detonating several nuclear weapons on the Sun's surface. In Gene Wolfe's 1980–1983 four-volume novel The Book of the New Sun and its sequels, a white hole is used to reinvigorate the dying Sun. The concept of using an explosive device for this purpose is also explored in the 2007 film Sunshine.


Several stories depict the Sun exploding, or "going nova". It was recognized early on that the immense destructive power of such an event would leave little to no hope of survival for humanity, and so while Simon Newcomb's 1903 short story "The End of the World" depicts a few survivors in the immediate aftermath, Hugh Kingsmill's 1924 short story also entitled "The End of the World" instead focuses on the anticipation of the destruction of the Earth. According to science fiction scholar Brian Stableford, writing in the 2006 work Science Fact and Science Fiction: An Encyclopedia, it was thus not until the concept of space travel became widespread in science fiction—hence making evacuation of the Earth a conceivable prospect—that such stories became popular. In John W. Campbell's 1930 short story "The Voice of the Void" humanity leaves Earth ahead of this disaster, while in Joseph W. Skidmore's 1931 short story "Dramatis Personae" the Sun explodes without warning, leaving a few people already in spaceships as the only survivors. In Arthur C. Clarke's 1946 short story "Rescue Party", aliens come to Earth to save humanity from the violent demise of the Sun only to find that evacuation has already been undertaken, whereas in his 1954 short story "No Morning After", the aliens' warning goes unheeded. J. T. McIntosh's 1954 novel One in Three Hundred deals with the allocation of the limited capacity aboard the evacuating spaceships. The Sun exploding occasionally appears as a background event to explain why humanity has abandoned Earth in favour of colonizing the cosmos, one example being Theodore Sturgeon's 1956 short story "The Skills of Xanadu". In Norman Spinrad's 1966 novel The Solarians, the Sun is intentionally made to explode in an act of interstellar warfare, while in Larry Niven's 1971 short story "The Fourth Profession" aliens plan to induce such an event to use as a power source for space travel. In Edward Wellen's 1971 novel Hijack, the Mafia is duped into abandoning Earth by being misled that the Sun will turn into a nova. Connie Willis's 1979 short story "Daisy, in the Sun" is a coming-of-age parable that relates a young girl getting her first period to the imminent end of the world. It is now recognized that the Sun cannot explode in this manner as the necessary stellar conditions are not met.


The heat of the Sun dooms life on Earth when the Earth's orbit is disrupted in John Hawkins's 1938 short story "Ark of Fire", the 1961 film The Day the Earth Caught Fire, and the 1961 episode "The Midnight Sun" of the television show The Twilight Zone. More fancifully, Clare Winger Harris's 1928 short story "The Menace of Mars" depicts an increase in heat from the Sun threatening the Earth as a result of a general cosmological change in the properties of the universe, which leads Mars to adjust Earth's orbit to serve as a shield against the Sun's radiation.


Solar storms such as solar flares appear in some stories. In Larry Niven's 1971 short story "Inconstant Moon", the sudden brightening of the Moon in the night sky leads the characters to conclude that the Sun has undergone a nova event that will destroy all life on Earth, though they later realize that a large solar flare would also produce that effect and that all hope might not be lost. The 1990 film Solar Crisis depicts a mission to bomb the Sun to avert the destruction that could be caused by an immense predicted solar flare, while the 2005 novel Sunstorm by Arthur C. Clarke and Stephen Baxter portrays mankind constructing a large shielding object at the Sun–Earth L1 Lagrange point as protection against the threat posed by a similar event. In David Koepp's 2022 novel Aurora, a coronal mass ejection threatens to end human civilization; the book appears alongside Niven's "Inconstant Moon" on a list of science fiction works with relatively scientifically plausible depictions of the Sun compiled by astronomer Andrew Fraknoi.
More long-lasting changes in solar output appear in Arthur G. Stangland's 1932 short story "50th Century Revolt", where an increase in solar activity forces humanity to slow the rotation of the Earth to a synchronous rotation—where the same side of the Earth faces the Sun at all times, thus protecting the other half of the planet from the scorching heat—for two millennia until the Sun dims again, and George O. Smith's 1953 novel Troubled Star, where aliens seek to turn the Sun into a variable star.


The Sun hides Counter-Earth—a planet diametrically opposite Earth in its orbit—in some stories including Edgar Wallace's 1929 novel Planetoid 127 and John Norman's Gor series starting with the 1966 novel Tarnsman of Gor. This Counter-Earth is inhabited by counterparts of the people of Earth in the 1969 film Doppelgänger (a.k.a. Journey to the Far Side of the Sun) and by a society of women in the 1950s comic strip Twin Earths. The 1972 anthology The Day the Sun Stood Still contains three different short stories (by Poul Anderson, Robert Silverberg, and Gordon R. Dickson) where the Sun stops in the sky as in the biblical Book of Joshua.


The energy output of the Sun was harnessed for power production in fiction as early as Hugo Gernsback's 1911 novel Ralph 124C 41+ and in several stories since, with Robert A. Heinlein's 1940 short story "Let There Be Light" describing economically viable solar panels and Isaac Asimov's 1941 short story "Reason" (later included in the 1950 fix-up novel I, Robot) depicting solar power produced in space but consumed on Earth. Other works have depicted solar arrays in close orbits around the Sun itself; Murray Leinster's 1931 short story "The Power Planet" features a variant that uses thermoelectric rather than photovoltaic principles. The Sun is also the source of comic book superhero Superman's superpowers, as well as those of supervillains Sun Girl from DC Comics and Solarr from Marvel Comics.


Following German astronomer Ludwig Biermann's 1951 discovery of the solar wind—a stream of charged particles from the Sun—stories emerged about spacecraft with solar sails. These devices capture the small amount of pressure pointing away from the Sun exerted by the solar wind, as well as the radiation pressure from the sunlight itself, and use it for propulsion. The idea was popular in 1960s science fiction, appearing among others in Jack Vance's 1962 short story "Gateway to Strangeness" and Cordwainer Smith's 1963 short story "Think Blue, Count Two". Arthur C. Clarke's 1964 short story "Sunjammer" (a.k.a. "The Wind from the Sun") depicts a race to the Moon between solar sail-propelled spacecraft. Robert A. Heinlein had earlier written about a proto-variation on the concept using an inertialess drive. The 1990 anthology Project Solar Sail edited by Clarke and David Brin collects various stories and essays about solar sails.


Solar eclipses are plot points in many stories. The earliest work of fiction in which an eclipse appears is the ancient Sumerian c. 2100 BCE Epic of Gilgamesh. Using knowledge of the underlying astronomy to be able to predict eclipses mathematically is a common trope—according to Stableford, it "became a key method by which European explorers could impress superstitious native populations in adventure stories". Several sources attribute the popularity of this trope to the possibly-apocryphal story of Christopher Columbus using foreknowledge of the March 1504 lunar eclipse to defuse a situation of increasingly strained relations with the Arawak people on Jamaica by pretending to cause the eclipse. H. Rider Haggard's 1885 novel King Solomon's Mines originally featured a solar eclipse in this manner, though later editions substituted a lunar eclipse to address the issue of the event having a several-hour duration, whereas solar eclipses last for a maximum of a few minutes. In a variation on the theme, Mark Twain's 1889 novel A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court depicts a time traveller using an almanac in this way to impress the people in Medieval Britain and become a person of influence. The eclipse prediction motif recurred in fiction until the 1930s or 1940s, by which time it fell out of favour. Eclipses continued to appear, but much more rarely. In William Lemkin's 1930 short story "The Eclipse Special", scientists construct an aircraft that will allow them to move with the eclipse's path of totality and remain in the Sun's umbra for longer in order to extend the amount of time available to study the eclipse. The 1961 film Barabbas portrays the crucifixion darkness during the biblical crucifixion of Jesus as a solar eclipse, and the scene was filmed during the solar eclipse of February 15, 1961. According to science fiction scholar Lisa Yaszek, the decades around the turn of the millennium saw the emergence of a trend wherein marginalized groups "experience a reversal of fortunes when the Moon takes center stage and blots out the Sun".


The 11-year solar cycle of sunspot activity appears in a small number of works such as Clifford D. Simak's 1940 short story "Sunspot Purge" and Philip Latham's 1959 short story "Disturbing Sun". In Robert A. Heinlein's 1952 short story "The Year of the Jackpot", this cycle is one of many that herald the end of the world when they align. Hyman Kaner's 1946 novel The Sun Queen is set on a sunspot, where two humans from Earth encounter two factions at war. In science fiction horror films, sunspots are occasionally invoked as the cause of various types of abnormal phenomena such as zombies and mass delusions.


The Sun appears as a hazard to spaceships that approach it too closely in some stories. In John W. Campbell's 1935 short story "Blindness", a scientist studies the Sun at close range in order to solve the mysteries of nuclear energy at great personal cost, only to find that the method for getting there was worth more than the discoveries made. Willy Ley's 1937 short story "At the Perihelion" involves a close approach to the Sun as part of an escape from Mars, and Charles L. Harness's 1949 novel The Paradox Men (a.k.a. Flight into Yesterday) is a space opera that climaxes with a swordfight atop a space station on the surface of the Sun. In Ray Bradbury's 1953 short story "The Golden Apples of the Sun", a crewed solar sample-return mission requires a spaceship to be cooled to near-absolute zero to endure the extreme heat during the critical phase. A fleet of near-Sun spacecraft that modulate the solar output for weather control purposes appears in Theodore L. Thomas's 1962 short story "The Weather Man". David Brin's 1980 novel Sundiver revolves around a hard science fiction journey into the Sun.


Some works depict the Sun as being sentient. According to The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, this is more commonly applied to other stars; in Olaf Stapledon's 1937 novel Star Maker, all stars are sentient, and in Diana Wynne Jones's 1975 novel Dogsbody, both the Sun and Sirius are sentient. In Gregory Benford and Gordon Eklund's 1977 novel If the Stars are Gods, aliens come to the Solar System to communicate with the Sun. According to The Encyclopedia of Fantasy, the Sun is usually male in fictional mythologies where it is personified, though some exceptions exist such as the legendarium of J. R. R. Tolkien, in whose cosmology it is female. The Sun is likewise female in Alasdair Gray's 1983 short story "The Problem", and concerned with her spots.


Taxi Driver (Autumn/Winter 1993) is the second collection by the British designer Alexander McQueen for his eponymous fashion house. It was named after the 1976 film Taxi Driver, and his father, a London taxicab driver. McQueen developed the collection following his 1992 graduation from Central Saint Martins art school. At the time he was unemployed and seeking a job in the fashion industry; although he was reluctant to launch his own company, he worked on designs to pass the time. The collection included experimental techniques and silhouettes, most notably the bumster trouser, whose extremely low waist exposed the top of the intergluteal cleft.
In lieu of a traditional fashion show, Taxi Driver was exhibited in a room at The Ritz Hotel during London Fashion Week in March 1993. McQueen was one of six young designers funded by the British Fashion Council that year. Aided by magazine editor Isabella Blow, who took it upon herself to promote McQueen, the collection garnered positive reviews. When the exhibition ended, McQueen packed the clothing into bin bags, went clubbing, and left the bags hidden in the rubbish behind the club. When he returned the next day, all the rubbish bags had been removed. Nothing remains of the collection.


British designer Alexander McQueen (born Lee Alexander McQueen) was known in the fashion industry for his imaginative, sometimes controversial, designs and dramatic fashion shows. During his nearly twenty-year career, he explored a broad range of ideas and themes, including historicism, romanticism, femininity, sexuality, and death. The son of a London taxicab driver and a teacher, he grew up in one of the poorer neighborhoods in London's East End. He began his career in fashion as an apprentice with Savile Row tailors Anderson & Sheppard before briefly joining Gieves & Hawkes as a pattern cutter. His work on Savile Row earned him a reputation as an expert tailor.
In October 1990, at the age of 21, McQueen began the eighteen-month masters-level course in fashion design at Central Saint Martins (CSM), a London art school. McQueen met a number of his future collaborators at CSM, including Simon Ungless, with whom he later lived. He graduated with his master's degree in fashion design in 1992. His graduation collection, Jack the Ripper Stalks His Victims, was bought in its entirety by magazine editor Isabella Blow, who became his mentor and his muse.


Following his graduation from CSM in 1992, McQueen's friends wanted him to start his own label. He was concerned about the difficulty involved in launching a new business, and was more interested in landing a job with an existing fashion house. He had interviews, but nothing came of them. At times, he worked as Blow's assistant, but mainly subsisted on unemployment benefits. In the meantime, he spent his time experimenting with designs, working closely with housemate Ungless, who was focused on prints. Eventually McQueen ended up with enough pieces to call a collection, decided to launch a small design label, and found himself in need of a name for his nascent company.
McQueen chose to design under his middle name, rather than his given name of Lee, resulting in the brand name Alexander McQueen. Blow was fond of taking credit for this decision, saying that Alexander was a more aristocratic-sounding name than Lee. McQueen claimed it was his idea to use a different name so that the unemployment benefits he was claiming as Lee McQueen would not get cut off. For the clothing tag, he re-used a concept from Jack the Ripper: clear plastic squares with locks of his own hair inside. This referenced the practice of Victorian-era prostitutes selling locks of hair as well as the general practice of people keeping a lock of hair as a memento or trophy.


Taxi Driver comprised some 26 pieces: 13 brand-new designs, in addition to concepts reworked from Jack the Ripper and other miscellaneous items. Many designs featured the sharp tailoring that became a McQueen signature. The clothes in the collection were made with unconventional techniques and materials, partially because McQueen and Ungless could rarely afford to buy decent fabric. McQueen used liquid latex to finish the edges of some garments rather than sewing a hem. He made a tank top of two layers of a clear plastic shower curtain, with partridge feathers wedged inside. Another garment had feathers lined up vertically around the collar, obscuring the face. The feathers were supplied by Ungless, whose father was a gamekeeper. Ungless created a series of prints for the collection from photos of missing and murdered people, rendered in black and white on cheap cotton; this became a skater skirt and a top. He printed an image of Robert De Niro as Travis Bickle from the 1976 film Taxi Driver on grey taffeta, from which McQueen made a tailored jacket or vest.
The most significant concept in the collection is the bumster trouser, a brand-new design whose extremely low waist exposed the top of the intergluteal cleft. Creating a completely new silhouette is a rarity in fashion, and a significant achievement. McQueen later described the bumsters as an effort to demonstrate how the cut of a garment could radically change the appearance of the body. The other individual item of note was called the "Scarlet Pimpernel coat", priced at £800. This was a grey coatdress with a jewelled collar and a cut right down the back that showed the wearer's whole spine. The collar alone took two weeks of work.
The collection's title references both the film Taxi Driver and McQueen's taxicab driver father, although he only admitted to the latter much later. Andrew Groves, a fellow designer and early boyfriend of McQueen's, believed it was named to honour McQueen's father. Ungless dismissed this idea, recalling that the collection was named after the film, because he and McQueen thought "De Niro looked incredibly fuckable" as Travis Bickle.


Blow had connections with fashion retailers, and she took him to various buyers hoping to secure orders. Joan Burstein, co-owner of Browns, a London boutique, recalled that the pieces were brought to her in a bin bag. She turned the clothing down, but told Blow that McQueen had talent worth working on. McQueen's friends Cressida Pye and Alice Smith, who had known him since 1992, had opened a fashion recruitment agency — essentially a matchmaking service that attempted to match designers with jobs at existing fashion houses. In an effort to promote McQueen's work to buyers, they held showings of Taxi Driver at their agency in Covent Garden in late February 1993.
Because of the slumping economy, few designers presented runway shows during London Fashion Week in early March 1993. The British Fashion Council provided funding for new designers to exhibit their collections at the Ritz Hotel in London in lieu of fashion shows, and McQueen was one of six successful applicants. Journalist Dana Thomas described the exhibition as "a bit of a ramshackle circus". McQueen had no money for staging, so the clothing was simply hung on whatever hangers he could find. He neglected his own appearance, meeting buyers and journalists in clothes that were torn or paint-splattered, and was often defensive when people made comments about the unusual designs. Once again, Blow took charge of promotion, corralling exhibition visitors into seeing McQueen's display.
Alice Smith wore a feather-collared bustier from the collection for a photo shoot with The Daily Telegraph in early March. On the taxi ride home, it shed feathers everywhere. Neither Smith nor McQueen wanted to deal with it, so she left it behind in the cab.
On the day the exhibition ended, McQueen and Ungless packed the garments up into bin bags. They went clubbing at King's Cross nightclub Man Stink to celebrate. Reluctant to pay the cloakroom fees, they hid the bags among the rubbish behind one the club, started drinking, and promptly forgot about them. By the time McQueen returned the next morning, rubbish collectors had removed everything. Nothing remains of the collection.


Lucinda Alford at The Observer wrote that the collection demonstrated McQueen's pattern-cutting skills with "some of the most interesting cuts around", and said that some of the garments, including the Scarlet Pimpernel coat, "could be works of art in their own right". She noted the combination of historicist references and futuristic concepts; McQueen relied on both throughout his career. Nilgin Yusuf at The Sunday Times said "McQueen is one of a new breed of British designers strong on craftsmanship and with a developing business sense who herald a renaissance in the much maligned British fashion industry." Iain R. Webb of The Times agreed, listing McQueen as one of a number of new designers whose "designs are unequivocably of today; their names should be world famous tomorrow".
Writing in 2009, fashion journalist Sarah Mower recalls the Taxi Driver collection as the moment British fashion started to recover from a slump that began with the Black Monday stock market crash of 1987. Curator Andrew Bolton remembered the bumster as "one of the garments that, very early on, would make his reputation as this provocateur". Journalist Susannah Frankel agreed; in a 2015 essay about McQueen's early years, she wrote that the collection "showcased many of the signature traits with which McQueen would make his name". Academic Chris McWade argued that Taxi Driver had been integrated into the mythology that surrounded McQueen: the complete loss of such an early collection "adds to the spectral quality and sense of loss that overarches his identity as a public figure".
When the Metropolitan Museum of Art began arranging the retrospective Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty, they contacted Smith in the hope that she still owned the feathered bustier from the Telegraph shoot. Although nothing remains of the clothing, a collection overview and a price list from the archive of early McQueen employee Ruti Danan were auctioned in 2020. The overview sold for $250, while the price list sold for $2,505.


The Birds (Spring/Summer 1995) is the fifth collection by British designer Alexander McQueen for his eponymous fashion house. The Birds was inspired by ornithology, the study of birds, and the 1963 Alfred Hitchcock film The Birds, after which it was named. Typically for McQueen in the early stages of his career, the collection centred on sharply tailored garments and emphasised female sexuality. McQueen had no financial backing, so the collection was created on a minimal budget.
The runway show for The Birds was staged on 9 October 1994, during London Fashion Week. The venue was a warehouse in the London district of King's Cross best known for hosting raves. Like his previous professional shows, The Birds was styled with imagery of violence and death; some models were covered in tyre tracks and others wore white contact lenses. Forty-five looks were presented. Corsetier Mr. Pearl appeared in a pencil skirt and tailored jacket.
Reception was generally positive, although the extreme styling drew accusations of misogyny. Many of the people who worked on The Birds with McQueen would go on to become longtime collaborators. The success of the show allowed McQueen to secure the financial backing to stage his next show, Highland Rape (Autumn/Winter 1995), the collection which effectively made his name. Garments from The Birds appeared in both stagings of the retrospective exhibition Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty. Seán McGirr heavily referenced The Birds for Autumn/Winter 2024, his debut collection as creative director for the Alexander McQueen brand.


British fashion designer Alexander McQueen was known for his imaginative, sometimes controversial designs, and dramatic fashion shows. During his nearly twenty-year career, he explored a broad range of ideas and themes, including historicism, romanticism, femininity, sexuality, and death. He began as an apprentice with Savile Row tailors Anderson & Sheppard before briefly joining Gieves & Hawkes as a pattern cutter. His work on Savile Row earned him a reputation as an expert tailor. In October 1990, at the age of 21, McQueen began the eighteen-month masters-level course in fashion design at Central Saint Martins (CSM), a London art school. McQueen met a number of his future collaborators at CSM, including Simon Ungless. He graduated with his master's degree in fashion design in 1992. His graduation collection, Jack the Ripper Stalks His Victims, was bought in its entirety by magazine editor Isabella Blow, who became his mentor and his muse.
McQueen's reputation for shocking runway shows began early. The sexualised clothing and aggressive styling in his first professional show, Nihilism (Spring/Summer 1994), was described by The Independent as a "horror show". The follow-up, Banshee (Autumn/Winter 1994), featured a model pretending to put a finger in her vagina on the runway. McQueen had no financial backing at the beginning of his career, so his collections were created on minimal budgets. He purchased whatever cheap fabric or fabric scraps were available. Collaborators often worked for minimal pay or were paid in garments. Some agreed to work for free because they were interested in working with McQueen, while others who had been promised compensation were simply never paid. Many actually wound up paying out of pocket for things like fabric and notions.


The Birds (Spring/Summer 1995) is the fifth collection by McQueen for his eponymous fashion house. It had multiple layers of inspiration. The greatest part came from ornithology, the study of birds, and the 1963 Alfred Hitchcock film The Birds, for which it was named. McQueen was a cinemaphile and many of his collections were inspired by his favourites. The Birds also referenced the mathematically inspired art of Dutch graphic artist M. C. Escher, who used birds and other animals as tiles in artistic tessellations. Car accidents and roadkill served as an additional inspiration. Ungless designed a print of tyre tracks to be used on many of the garments, suggesting scenes in The Birds where the characters flee the attacking birds in cars. According to Ungless, the design echoed the rationale behind McQueen's use of dead locusts on garments in his earlier collection Nihilism: "Complete chaos and human vulnerability in the face of nature gone wrong".
Fleet Bigwood, a CSM lecturer, contributed to fabric design. Fashion designer Andrew Groves, whom McQueen dated from 1994 to 1996, worked on the collection after McQueen found out Groves could sew. McQueen enlisted Ungless to create printed fabric based on Escher's designs, and Ungless, then a print technician at CSM, stole fabric from the school to use as a base. Ungless laid out a concept based on McQueen's request to have a print with "garden birds", but described the result as "awful – like a Christmas card gone wrong". Groves was asked to replace it, coming up with a print of black silhouettes of swallows in flight, a popular motif in classic skinhead subculture and nautical tattoos, representing endurance and courage. The print most prominently appeared on Look 33, on a burnt orange jacket, and Look 40, on an orange-red pencil skirt. It also appeared on a white frock coat, the show's final ensemble. Fashion historian Alistair O'Neill saw the print as depicting swallows mid-dive, which he believed was a reference to a scene in Hitchcock's film where birds invade a home by diving down the chimney.
Many of McQueen's designs for The Birds, particularly the tight pencil skirts and wasp-waisted jackets, emulated the tightly tailored 1950s fashion worn by the film's star, Tippi Hedren, although he avoided directly copying her outfit. Ungless described McQueen as fascinated by the way Hedren was made vulnerable by her constricting clothing, and sought to take the effect to an extreme. Some models found the garments difficult to walk in on the runway. Despite the extensive presence of tailoring, Groves later suggested that McQueen's time as a theatrical costumier had more influence on this collection than his time on Savile Row. McQueen's bumsters, an extremely low-cut trouser that exposed the top of the intergluteal cleft, made an appearance in several outfits, including in wet-look black for Look 43.


McQueen often designed spontaneously, right on the dressmaker's dummy, and did so for many of the looks in The Birds. Groves described watching him create an entire dress on the stand in approximately an hour, working from raw materials, without any realisation that this was a highly unconventional method. Look 35, a dress made of clear pallet wrap, was created in a similar fashion. It was inspired by a sexual encounter Groves had years earlier, in which the other man wrapped Groves in pallet wrap, immobilising him. Some weeks after Groves told McQueen about the incident, the two were walking on the street when McQueen spotted a discarded bolt of pallet wrap and took it home to make a dress that night.


The runway show was staged on 9 October 1994 during London Fashion Week. The venue was Bagley's, a warehouse in the London district of King's Cross. Bagley's was known for hosting raves, and was allegedly owned by British organised crime. McQueen was able to secure the use of the warehouse for only £500. The show's invite was a black and white photograph of a baby bird lying on a roadway, apparently run over. McQueen was so poor at the time of The Birds that he had to borrow money to pay for a cab to get to the show.
Jewellery designer Simon Costin had asked to do the set design in exchange for also lending accessories for the show. McQueen readily agreed, especially since Costin offered to work for free and the show's budget was, as Costin later put it, "something like fifty pounds". Because of the limited budget, the set was kept simple: a black backdrop and a straight black concrete runway with white slashes meant to look like road markings, inspired by the tyre tread pattern found on some of the clothing. Models entered through a short backlit tunnel at the rear of the stage.
Sam Gainsbury served as casting director. McQueen found a stylist to help him oversee the models' looks for the runway show: Katy England, then working for British magazine Dazed & Confused. As with Costin, England also had no experience in the role; McQueen selected her based on having seen her at shows in stylish outfits. In addition to her styling duties, she also served as a fit model for many of the garments. England added a few outside garments for the runway show, including leather jackets.


The styling for the models was explicitly sexual, with many runway looks exposing underwear or bare breasts. One look consisted solely of a silver lamé jacket over lace underwear. Look 35, the clear pallet wrap dress, was worn with nothing but black bikini underwear, and the model's upper thighs were tied with string to create a pencil skirt effect. The models wore stiletto heels attached to their feet with packing tape; these were cheap shoes bought from charity shops with the uppers removed to leave only the soles and heels. The accessories Costin supplied included pieces made from jet, enamel, and cockerel feathers, including one black feathered dickey worn over a gold shift dress. Look 43 was styled with a black choker hung with a taxidermy bird.
Makeup was styled by artist Val Garland, and was kept light: skin was pale and lips were orange-red. Eugene Souleiman styled hair, with McQueen requesting a look of "destruction". Souleiman opted not to emulate Hedren's iconic bouffant updo, as McQueen would have found the visual homage "too obvious". Souleiman decided to have the models' hair blow-dried straight and the ends crimped to fluffiness, creating a floating effect while they walked the runway. Just before the show, McQueen decided to add tyre tracks to some of the models to make it look as though they had been run over. They used a tyre from his assistant's car, covered it in grease, and rolled it over the models before they got dressed. This effect is most clearly seen in Look 12, a frock coat worn with nothing but a pair of high-cut briefs. Some models were given opaque white full-eye contact lenses to give them a dehumanised look. These were custom-made at significant cost, paid for by Derek Anderson, a supporter of McQueen's from New York City who worked in public relations and helped fund many of McQueen's early projects.
McQueen had generated a great deal of excitement about the show in the media, and there was a long queue to get in. The majority of the audience were fashion students and ravers, however – the fashion establishment was not yet interested in McQueen, and the few industry professionals who attended mostly did so at the behest of Isabella Blow. The tight budget did not allow for any security, and one of McQueen's public relations people had to manage the rowdy crowd. Both of McQueen's parents were in attendance, although his father – who was not entirely comfortable with McQueen's choice of career – turned up late, stayed at the back of the venue, and left without speaking to his son. The show started 90 minutes late. It ended with the audience on their feet screaming.
Forty-five looks were presented. Fashion writer Plum Sykes, then an assistant at British Vogue, modelled Look 33. She later recalled the experience as "Magic, mad, and marvelous!" Corsetmaker Mr. Pearl, who had met McQueen at a King's Cross club, walked the runway in Look 40, a tailored short jacket, shirt and tie, and tight red pencil skirt with the swallow print. His corset-trained waist was only 18 inches at the time. Mr. Pearl later called the experience boring and said he had never been paid, but that he was "pleased to have met" McQueen. Madonna was rumoured to have purchased the jacket modelled by Mr. Pearl, indicating that McQueen's work was attracting more attention.


Journalist Dana Thomas reports that the reviews were very positive, particularly with regards to McQueen's sharp tailoring. Both The Times and the Evening Standard called the show the "hottest ticket" of London Fashion Week that season. Writing for the Evening Standard, Alison Veness called the close-cut designs "sharp enough to draw blood". In a short review for The Globe and Mail, David Livingstone wrote that McQueen had "achieved heights of lowdown style", with "attitude anchored in skill". Women's Wear Daily highlighted the blatant sexuality and streetwear elements as well as McQueen's tailoring, stating that "McQueen can cut with the best of them". In an overview of British designers for Fashion Week, Iain R. Webb wrote that McQueen's "sense of the macabre has the international fashion set screaming for more".
Other reviewers were not so uniformly impressed. Although Amy Spindler of The New York Times found the tailored jackets excellent and acknowledged that McQueen was generating the most discussion of any designer in London that season, she was critical of the tight pencil skirts and bumster trousers, saying "It is strange to see so talented a designer committed to the unwearable". Barbara Weiser, of the now-defunct Charivari boutique chain, attended the show and described the collection as unimaginative and uncreative.
The show is regarded positively in retrospect. Fashion journalist Hamish Bowles described the show as "a revelation" in 1999. He revisited the collection in 2010 after McQueen's death, calling it the point that he realised McQueen's potential to change the status quo of fashion. In a 2015 retrospective, Vogue highlighted the aesthetic of destruction in the collection and noted it had been a recurring theme in McQueen's fashion throughout his career.


Much of the critical analysis of The Birds revolves around the depiction of women as apparent victims of violence, especially in light of the sexualised styling of the clothing. The show drew accusations that the presentation was misogynistic, not for the first or the last time in McQueen's career. McQueen objected to this characterisation, saying: "I don’t want women to look all innocent and naive, because I know what can happen to them. I want women to look stronger." Ungless stated that McQueen's object was to depict a beautiful woman "put at extreme risk but winning in the end".
Fashion historian Caroline Evans positioned the extreme styling of The Birds as typical of independent British fashion designers in the 1990s. At the time, the industry was poorly supported and funding was scarce. Young designers took to creating shocking runway shows to generate press coverage in the hopes of attracting backers. Evans suggests that once McQueen found sufficient backing, he pivoted the styling of his shows from violent to theatrical. Diana Villanueva Romero analysed the collection from an ecofeminist perspective, arguing that although McQueen had previously presented women as victims of violence, it was only with The Birds that McQueen had "for the first time, situated women as substitutes for animal victims". In her view, McQueen was presenting a connection between the cruelty suffered by both women and animals in order to denounce this violence. In an opinion piece for Fangoria, author Vanessa Guerrera argued that McQueen's presentation in The Birds subverted the 1960s aesthetic by making the models "less the standard chic, pretty little things, and more things to dread". Guerrera believed the indicia of violence – torn clothes, white eyes, and tyre tracks – made the models intimidating, and therefore showed that McQueen was positioning women as empowered survivors rather than as powerless victims. Author Ana Finel Honigman agreed, writing that "the models symbolised the struggle to survive".
Alistair O'Neill focused on the collection as it related to Hitchcock. McQueen referenced several of the director's films throughout his career, exploring what O'Neill called "representations of femininity and how they are challenged through transformation scenes". For O'Neill, the reappearance of the swallows print on the skirt worn by Mr. Pearl was McQueen's way of "translating femininity through artifice from one body to another". He argued that by having a man walk in a womenswear show wearing womenswear, McQueen was disrupting the "ordered sense of femininity" typical of catwalk shows. Honigman also remarked on the "interplay of masculine and feminine", noting Mr. Pearl's appearance as an example of how McQueen challenged gender archetypes.


Following the show, Italian fashion manufacturer Eo Bocci offered to purchase 51% of McQueen's label for £10,000. McQueen refused, as he wanted to retain control of his company. Instead, they agreed on a pair of related contracts: the first gave Bocci distribution rights for McQueen's label for the next fifteen years, and the second made Bocci responsible for arranging manufacturing for McQueen. Bocci would source Italian garment manufacturers to produce McQueen's clothes for retail. The money from the deal with Bocci gave McQueen the funding to stage his next show, Highland Rape (Autumn/Winter 1995), the collection which effectively made his name.
Many of the people who worked on The Birds went on to become regular collaborators. Stylist Katy England, who worked as McQueen's creative director until 2007, became known as his "second opinion". Simon Ungless worked on prints for later collections, including Highland Rape and Dante (Autumn/Winter 1996). Simon Costin worked with McQueen regularly until Untitled (Spring/Summer 1998). Sam Gainsbury, working with her partner Anna Whiting, went on to produce all of McQueen's runway shows. Val Garland styled makeup for several future shows, including The Dance of the Twisted Bull (Spring/Summer 2002) and In Memory of Elizabeth Howe, Salem, 1692 (Autumn/Winter 2007). Eugene Souleiman returned to style hair for Scanners (Autumn/Winter 2003) and The Widows of Culloden (Autumn/Winter 2006), among others.
A tyre track print was used again for Look 63 of Bellmer La Poupée (Spring/Summer 1997). Birds, wings, and feathers were a recurring theme in McQueen's work throughout his career, particularly in La Dame Bleue (Spring/Summer 2008), whose stage was illuminated by giant blue neon wings, and The Horn of Plenty (Autumn/Winter 2009), which featured women in feathered dresses and a reworked version of the swallows print from The Birds. Cinema also remained a significant influence; future collections such as Deliverance (Spring/Summer 2004) and The Man Who Knew Too Much (Autumn/Winter 2005) took direct visual cues from the films which inspired them. One look from The Man Who Knew Too Much is a clear duplicate of Tippi Hedren's outfit from The Birds, a reference he had avoided making in the eponymous collection.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art (the Met) in New York City owns the orange jacket from Look 33. It appeared in both stagings of Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty, at the Met in 2011 and at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London in 2015. It also appeared in the Met's 2016 exhibit Masterworks: Unpacking Fashion.
When early McQueen employee Ruti Danan auctioned her personal archive in 2020, an invitation to The Birds sold for a reported $625 USD. Patterns for a backless jacket, dress, and bumsters sold for $1,125, $1,625, and $2,375, respectively. The bird choker from Look 43 was auctioned by Kerry Taylor Auctions in June 2023, fetching a reported £24,000.
Seán McGirr heavily referenced The Birds for Autumn/Winter 2024, his debut collection as creative director for the Alexander McQueen brand.


Timeless is the sixth major-label studio album by American singer-songwriter Meghan Trainor. It was released on June 7, 2024, by Epic Records. Trainor collaborated with producers such as Federico Vindver, Gian Stone, Grant Boutin, and Jason Evigan and featured artists included T-Pain, Lawrence, and Niecy Nash. The album has a doo-wop and bubblegum pop sound with club beats and influences of dance-pop and R&B. Its message centers on self-empowerment, women's empowerment, and positive self-talk, drawing inspiration from Trainor's family, motherhood, and her experiences in the music industry.
Trainor promoted Timeless with public appearances and televised performances on programs such as Today and The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon. After its release, she embarked on her first concert tour in over seven years, The Timeless Tour (2024). The album was supported by three singles, "Been Like This", a collaboration with T-Pain, "To the Moon", and "Whoops". Critics believed it combined genres from Trainor's previous music in a more intense manner. Timeless debuted at number 27 on the US Billboard 200 with Trainor's best sales week since 2020. The album also reached number 12 in the United Kingdom and number 23 in Australia. Its deluxe edition, supported by the single "Criminals", was released on August 16, 2024.


Meghan Trainor's popularity declined in the lead-up to the release of her third major-label studio album, Treat Myself (2020), and it received limited live promotion due to the COVID-19 lockdowns. After her 2014 song "Title" attained viral popularity on the video-sharing service TikTok in 2021, she announced her intention to return to its parent album's doo-wop sound on her fifth major-label studio album. TikTok was highly influential on Trainor's creative process, and she began writing material that would resonate with its userbase. She gained popularity on the service by regularly sharing clips that she filmed with influencer Chris Olsen. Her 2022 album Takin' It Back included the single "Made You Look", which went viral on TikTok. It became Trainor's first song since 2016 to enter the top 40 on the US Billboard Hot 100 and reached the top 10 in several other countries.


Trainor hosted producer Gian Stone in an episode of her podcast Workin' on It in March 2023, during which she announced that she had one more album left in her contract with Epic Records. She was considering recording country songs for it at the time. The first Timeless track to be written was "Doin' It All for You", which was created without plans for a full-length album in mind. Trainor wrote the song "Forget How to Love" with her brothers and Scott Hoying within 10 days after giving birth to her second son, who was born on July 1, 2023.
The song "Whoops" was inspired by the work of American rapper Jack Harlow, as Trainor imagined what a collaboration between them would sound like. After Trainor had written many self-confidence songs for the album, she ran out of inspiration. Her manager sent her a speech by American actress Niecy Nash, which stimulated her creatively and inspired "I Wanna Thank Me"; Nash appeared as a feature on it. Trainor previewed it for the label alongside the songs "Been Like This", "To the Moon", "Forget How to Love", and "Whoops". They were satisfied with the material, according to Trainor, and they nudged her to rapidly complete the rest of the album. She worked with producers including Federico Vindver, Stone, Grant Boutin, her brother Justin, and Jason Evigan. Both Vindver and Stone had served as producers on Takin' It Back, and the former produced three tracks for Trainor's Christmas album A Very Trainor Christmas (2020). Timeless was completed in approximately three months.
Trainor had been a fan of American singer and rapper T-Pain for years, having previously cited him as an inspiration in a 2014 interview. Reciprocating this, he began seeking out the help of her husband, Daryl Sabara, and her manager to bring about a meeting in 2023. Trainor sent him two songs, suggesting that he feature on them, but she did not immediately receive a response. Instead, T-Pain surprised her at her 30th birthday celebration, where they ate pizza and played each other unreleased music. He told her that he had recorded guest appearances for both the songs, "Been Like This" and "Love on Hold", to appear on Timeless.
Trainor chose Timeless as the album title to reflect her desire to live forever for her children: "I want to live. Like, 'Wow. We're so lucky, we're here. We have all this time together.'" She believed the album consisted of "a lot of self-help pop bangers" and "some really soulful songs". Trainor's intention with it was to make listeners happy: "If they're feeling down about themselves, I hope that my song can try to change their energy and their inner thoughts, hopefully, to make them feel a little better [...] So I hope I'm making people dance and making people happy." In the accompanying statement, Trainor celebrated the 10-year anniversary of her career and dedicated Timeless to her fans and family.


The standard edition of Timeless contains 16 tracks; on physical editions, the track "Bite Me" is exclusive to the Target version. The album predominantly has a doo-wop and bubblegum pop sound with club beats and influences of dance-pop and R&B. Contrasting the consistently doo-wop-influenced pop style of Takin' It Back, Trainor wanted the songs on Timeless to begin in one genre and switch to another by the chorus, which she believed "opened up a new genre". Benjamin Jack of Sputnikmusic described its predominant style as "doo-wop infrastructure charged with modern pop hallmarks", while Riff's Mike DeWald thought it is strictly embedded in pop but signs of doo-wop and classic vocal standards are found throughout it. Lyrically, Timeless has a message of self-empowerment and positive self-talk found in Trainor's earlier music, inspired by her family, motherhood, and experiences in the music industry. She presents a feminist point of view on dating and emotional detachment in relationships, highlighting her concerns about the consequences of men's actions and societal misogyny while emphasizing women's empowerment.


The opening track, "To the Moon", is a minor key 1960s-style torch song which incorporates brass instrumentation, a compact groove, and club beats. It has space-themed lyrics inspired by Trainor's son's love of space and rocket ships. "Been Like This", a collaboration with T-Pain, begins with a jazz-influenced intro and transitions into a trumpet melody, combining hip-hop beats, synthesizers, and doo-wop with Charleston. "Crowded Room" is a doo-wop song that has the same "brassy sway" as Trainor's 2014 single "All About That Bass", but its harmonized vocals are distinct and "more quiet and intimate", according to DeWald. The fourth track, "Whoops", is a pop-doo-wop break-up song with influences of R&B, on which Trainor addresses an ex-partner and derides the woman who he cheated on her with.
"Crushin'", which features American band Lawrence, is a pop song with a covert rhythm that has lyrics about how the narrator has a crush on themself. The reggaeton and girl group-influenced "I Wanna Thank Me" is about self-love and encourages listeners to prioritize their mental health; it samples Nash's acceptance speech at the 75th Primetime Emmy Awards, where she thanked herself, incorporating background vocals from her wife and daughter. The seventh track, "Love On Hold", features Auto-Tuned vocals from T-Pain over a salsa-inspired production. "Forget How to Love" addresses Trainor's perception of an increase in online hate and someone who made her feel undeserving. The ninth track, "Rollin'", has Brill Building production which incorporates strings, bass, and brass instrumentation; in its feminist lyrics influenced by her experiences in the music industry, Trainor addresses society's hypocritical expectations for women and the misogyny and mansplaining they endure from men, according to South China Morning Post's Rhea Saxena. Both songs are influenced by modern R&B.
"I Don't Do Maybe" has horn instrumentation and a Latin and Cuban-influenced rhythm. The 11th track, "I Get It", is a pop song, followed by "Sleepin' on Me", which is a "return to that doo-wap/hip-pop hybrid style" according to Renowned for Sound's Graeme R. "Hate It Here" has lyrics about disliking being at a club, which are playful and sarcastic according to critics. "Bestie" is a club pop song which discusses self-love in the context of friendships over simplistic production, and "Doin' It All for You" is a 1980s synth-pop song. Timeless closes with the title track, a rhythmic ballad inspired by Trainor's death anxiety, which she also wanted to be a "beautiful love song" that could be played at a wedding or used to reminisce about a loved one who is away. The Target edition includes the additional track "Bite Me". The deluxe edition includes "Make a Move", "Criminals", and "Booty" featuring Paul Russell. In the lyrics of "Criminals", Trainor describes something that brings her so much satisfaction that she feels it must "be illegal".


Trainor and T-Pain released "Been Like This" as the lead single from the album on March 14, 2024. The same day, she announced that the album, titled Timeless, would be released on June 14, and she shared its official artwork on social media. In the cover photograph, Trainor wears lengthy black gloves and cobalt blue tights. "Been Like This" was sent for radio airplay in Italy on March 22, and it charted at number 40 in the United Kingdom and number 51 in Ireland. The second single, "To the Moon" was released on May 3, 2024, followed by a music video which featured appearances by her son, Sabara, Nash, Olsen, and influencers Brookie and Jessie. Trainor performed the songs during the 22nd season of American Idol on May 5.
Epic Records released the album on June 7, 2024. The same day, Trainor performed "Whoops" and a medley of "Been Like This" with "To the Moon" on Today. Initially refraining from promoting any songs to radio stations unless they gained popularity on TikTok, the label sent "Whoops" to them as the third single on June 24. A music video for the song was released on June 10, depicting her dancing in an empty room and destroying furniture with a baseball bat. The following day, Trainor reprised it on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon. "Whoops" charted at number 94 in the United Kingdom and "I Wanna Thank Me" reached number 86. Trainor sang "I Wanna Thank Me" during iHeartRadio's Can't Cancel Pride 2024, and "Been Like This" and "Whoops" at Capital's Summertime Ball 2024.
The deluxe edition of Timeless was released on August 16, 2024. Its lead single, "Criminals", was sent for radio airplay in Italy on September 20 that year, and to contemporary hit radio stations in the United States four days later. The song gained popularity after being used as the theme in the Netflix miniseries The Perfect Couple (2024). It reached number 100 in the United States and number 92 in Canada. Timeless was supported by Trainor's first headlining concert tour in over seven years, The Timeless Tour, which began in Cincinnati in September 2024 and concluded in Inglewood, California, in October 2024. Natasha Bedingfield, Olsen, Russell, and Trainor's brother Ryan served as special guests. According to Pollstar, it was 98% sold out and grossed $14.1 million in revenue. Trainor performed "Been Like This" and "Criminals" at the 2024 KIIS-FM Jingle Ball.


Critics analyzed Timeless in the context of Trainor's previous material. DeWald believed that though she had always combined different genres in her music, the album featured "classic sounds" and the synthesis felt more intense. AllMusic's Matt Collar thought Trainor borrowed a bit from all musical styles she had tried in the past, hitting several stylistic notes that popularized her, and delivered a "frothy, confident, mixtape of an album". Likewise, Graeme R found it a great addition to Trainor's discography and believed it focused on her musical niche despite her venturing into some other genres. Benjamin Jack of Sputnikmusic described the album as a clear improvement from Takin' It Back, but he opined that it was devoid of a true sense of direction, and though Trainor leaned into the modern aspect of her sound, it was not interesting enough for a whole album.
They also commented on the songwriting and lyricism of Timeless. Collar believed that though doo-wop can be a whimsical and pastiche genre, the album was intelligently written and filled with melodic hooks that accentuate Trainor's talents as a pop songwriter as well as singer. DeWald thought it offered her brand new perspective after becoming a mother, placing emphasis on her family, and was consistently fresh throughout its duration. South China Morning Post's Rhea Saxena praised Timeless and believed it would empower young women to resist sexism and toxic relationships. On the other hand, Jack opined that poor lyricism and incohesion kept the album's friendly focus below its aspirations and the repetitive theme of love created redundancy. He thought that it displayed "flashes of songwriting prowess", but they were overshadowed by the production, doo-wop style, and "low points".


Upon its release, Timeless was the third-highest debut of the week in the United States and Australia. In the former, the album debuted at number 27 on the Billboard 200. It sold 12,000 pure sales, including 3,000 vinyl units, which constituted Trainor's biggest sales week since 2020 and her best week in vinyl sales. Timeless entered at number 48 on the Canadian Albums Chart. The album reached number 23 in Australia, becoming her fourth-highest peak on the chart. It became Trainor's third-highest charting album in the UK and debuted at number 12, marking an improvement of 55 positions from Takin' It Back. Timeless charted at number 55 in Austria, number 97 in Switzerland, and number 158 in Belgium. The album lasted three weeks on the chart in Belgium, two in the United Kingdom and the United States, and one in Australia, Austria, Canada, and Switzerland.


^[a] signifies an additional producer
^[v] signifies a vocal producer


Randy Merrill – mastering
Tom Norris – mixing (tracks 1–9, 11–16)
Jeremie Inhaber – mixing (track 10)
Justin Trainor – engineering (tracks 1–3, 5–16)
Federico Vindver – engineering (tracks 1, 3, 6, 9, 11), arrangement (1)
T-Pain – engineering (tracks 2, 7)
Brian Starley – engineering (tracks 3, 6, 9, 11)
Gian Stone – engineering (track 4)
Grant Boutin – engineering (track 4)
Meghan Trainor – vocal arrangement (track 8)
Scott Hoying – vocal arrangement (track 8)


Transport played a critical part in the success of the 2024 Summer Olympics and Paralympics, hosted in Paris, from 26 July to 11 August and 28 August to 8 September respectively. Due to the scale of the events, moving athletes, officials, media and spectators to competition venues constituted a major challenge. As part of Paris's bid for the games, officials stated that 100% of spectators would use public transport, and the compact arrangement of venues would deliver short journey times. Over €500 million was invested in improvements to transport infrastructure for the games.
A mobile app was developed to facilitate spectator travel by offering a route calculator that can adapt to hazards. To assist travellers, 5,000 agents, identifiable by purple vests, were deployed in the stations and at bus stops. Most bus lines were accessible to people with reduced mobility, but with limited capacity in cases of high demand, such as during the Paralympic Games, 1,000 taxis accessible to people in wheelchairs were made available. The vast majority of Paris Métro stations were still not accessible to all, but some 150 wheelchair-accessible shuttles were provided to transport spectators between venues and an accessible station. Security around the transport system was heavy and coordinated, but on 26 July 2024, the day of the 2024 Summer Olympics opening ceremony, a series of arson attacks disrupted rail services.
A stated goal of Paris 2024 was to halve the carbon footprint of the Olympic and Paralympic Games compared with London 2012 and Rio 2016. The organisers estimated that more than a third of the greenhouse gas emissions linked to the games would be from the transport of athletes and spectators. To meet this goal, all venues were made accessible by bicycle and public transport. Public transport was extended and improved, and services increased. Some 415 kilometres (258 mi) of cycle paths were created, linking major venues, with 27,000 temporary bicycle racks installed. The goal of halving carbon emissions was ultimately met, with an estimated 1.59 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent, which represented a 54.6% reduction compared to the London and Rio average. Of this, 53% of the carbon footprint (about 833,600 tonnes of CO2 equivalent) was incurred by visitors travelling to the games.

Transport during the 2024 Summer Olympics and Paralympics


Paris was formally announced as the host city for the 2024 Summer Olympics and Paralympics at an International Olympic Committee (IOC) meeting in Lima, Peru, on 13 September 2017, although it had been a near certainty since 11 July, when rival Los Angeles elected to bid for 2028 instead. The games were hosted from 26 July to 11 August (Summer Olympics) and 28 August to 8 September (Paralympics). To host the games, organisers must provide transport for a wide range of groups – including athletes and officials, media and spectators. The IOC consider transport as being "critical to the success of the games", with some previous games (such as Atlanta 1996) marred by transport issues.
As part of their bid for the games, Paris claimed that they had "the world's best public transport system", proposing that spectators would use free public transport, and that the compact arrangement of venues would deliver short journey times for athletes and officials, media and spectators. A stated goal of Paris 2024 was to halve the carbon footprint of the Olympic and Paralympic Games compared with London 2012 and Rio 2016. The average carbon footprint for these games was 3.5 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent from both direct and indirect effects, such as spectator travel. Transport was an important component of this. To reduce the contribution of transport, all venues would be accessible by bicycle and public transport, and the transport fleet would include hybrid vehicles and hydrogen-powered buses.
In the Paris region, public transport is managed by Île-de-France Mobilités, which coordinates the contracts with transport companies such as RATP (the operator of the Paris Métro and some Réseau Express Régional (RER) lines) and SNCF (the French national railway operator). It became an official partner of the games in June 2022 to facilitate the organisation of transport. The majority of event sites were in the Paris area: 25 sites (13 in Paris and 12 in the suburbs) with 50 sessions per day for the Olympics and 17 sites (10 in Paris and 7 in the suburbs) with 18 sessions per day for the Paralympics, for 767 and 261 sessions respectively, including the two opening and closing ceremonies. These events involved 500,000 spectators per day for the Olympic Games and 300,000 for the Paralympic Games. A February 2023 fact-finding mission of the National Assembly reported that "France's success in organising the games will be judged in particular by its ability to manage the movement of people", with no fewer than 600,000 spectators, 35% of whom come from abroad, and 200,000 accredited persons having to be transported daily.
A Strategic Mobility Committee was established in October 2023 by Minister for Transport, Clément Beaune; Minister for Sports and the Olympic and Paralympic Games, Amélie Oudéa-Castéra; and Minister for People with Disabilities, Geneviève Darrieussecq. It was tasked with discussing "all transport issues for the Olympic and Paralympic Games" to ensure "the continuity and fluidity of routes, for all types of passengers, from one end of their journey to the other, accredited members, visitors to the games and everyday users." It was expected to meet every six weeks, but did not meet for the first time until December 2022, and a national mobility coordinator for the Olympic Games, Florent Bardon, was not appointed until 8 December. Bardon was the director of finance and investment programming at Gares and Connexions, a subsidiary of SNCF. Le Monde described him as the "Mr Transport" of the games.
The COVID-19 pandemic delayed work on construction sites and disrupted the transport networks, forcing a halt in recruitment, numerous resignations and increased absenteeism, which led to a significant deterioration in service by late 2022, with a quarter of the bus services not running. The effects persisted into 2024, and by early the next year nearly 10% of the RATP bus network services were not running, and only 84% of the RER C trains were on time, mainly due to the shortage of drivers at SNCF despite the resumption of driver training. In December 2023, five Métro lines (2, 3, 6, 8 and 13) still had service levels below 90%, far below the previous standard of most lines.


Over €500 million was invested in improvements to transport infrastructure for the games. The objective of the Paris Organising Committee for the 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games (COJOP) was to allow 100% of spectators to reach the Olympic and Paralympic sites by public transport.
Engineering or improvement works in Paris are normally scheduled for the summer, resulting in service interruptions, but no works were scheduled for the summer of 2024. Construction work was "frozen" on the network from July until the end of September. Consequently, there were numerous disruptions to services in 2023 and the first half of 2024, especially on Line 14 with significant traffic interruptions over several weekends and during school holidays.
To meet the increased number of passengers on the lines compared to a normal summer, the frequency, and hours of service for public transport was increased by an average of 15%. This was concentrated in the heart of the city and particularly affected the lines serving Olympic sites such as the RER B and RER D, tramway Line T11 and Paris Métro Line 14, which were augmented by shuttle buses. During the games, visitors to Paris paid higher public transport fares to recover some of the cost of this increased level of service.
A mobile application was developed to facilitate spectator travel by offering a route calculator that could respond to delays and guide travellers onto alternative services to reduce congestion. To assist travellers, 5,000 agents, identifiable by purple vests, were deployed in the stations and at the bus stops, where special signage was affixed. Venues of the games were indicated on line maps on trains and in stations in distinctive pink.


Security for the Paris region transport network was coordinated by the Paris Police Prefecture, which became solely responsible for security and public order in the Île-de-France region under the Olympic law of 19 May 2023. This law broadened the scope of video surveillance images visible to SNCF and RATP agents in the Paris region transport security coordination centre.


Commencing in mid-2022, and for the duration of the games, transport security coordination was carried out from the Operational Security Command Center (CCOS), which brought together all stakeholders (including the police of the regional transport department, gendarmes and the security services of transport operators such as RATP, SNCF and Optile) in shared premises located at the Paris Police Prefecture headquarters. The CCOS was connected to 101,000 video surveillance cameras located throughout the various transport networks. During the Olympic Games, police patrols increased from 125 to 700 per day, with the number of transport police officers increased from 1,100 to 1,300. In addition to the 3,000 permanent security agents, another 5,000 temporary agents and more than 50 canine explosives detection units were deployed on the transport network to intervene when abandoned objects were discovered.


In 2023, concerns were raised regarding accessibility for the games. Lobbying group APF France Handicap said that the Paris Métro was a "big black spot on the city's Paralympic legacy". Organisers anticipated that 350,000 fans with disabilities would be visiting Paris.
The entire tramway network was accessible, as were the majority of Transilien stations. Most bus lines were accessible to people with reduced mobility, with Paris spending €25 million to upgrade bus stops and train staff on accessibility. Over 1,000 taxis accessible to people in wheelchairs were delivered prior to the games. Wheelchair-accessible shuttle buses were provided to transport spectators between venues and an accessible station, with increased service during the Paralympic Games.
The vast majority of Métro stations were not accessible to all. There are multiple obstacles to providing accessible ramps and elevators in Métro stations: much of the infrastructure is old, some stations are classified under architectural heritage rules, and there are technical difficulties with some stations. The twenty stations on Line 14 (which first opened in 1998) are fully accessible, and extensions of lines since 1992 have included elevators.
Prior to the Paralympic Games, the Île-de-France regional president, Valérie Pécresse, announced a plan to make the Métro accessible. Île-de-France Mobilités noted that this work would take around 20 years and cost between €15 and 20 billion. International Paralympic Committee president Andrew Parsons welcomed the commitment, specifically mentioning it during his speech at the Paralympics closing ceremony.


At the time of Paris's bid to host the Olympic Games, it was proposed that free public transport would be provided for ticket holders to attend the events, similar to London 2012. Following the surge in inflation in 2022, Paris 2024 dropped this proposal when their budget was revised. Île-de-France Mobilités stated that it would not give free passes to ticket holders, so Parisian commuters would not be subsidising visitors. To cover the cost of the increased services offered during the games, visitors to Paris had to pay higher fares.
From 20 July to 8 September 2024, a temporary ticket called the "Paris 2024 pass" was sold, allowing for an unlimited number of journeys in Île-de-France. The pass cost €16 for one day or €70 for a week. Over the same period, the price of certain tickets was increased: €4 for the Ticket t+, €32 for the 10-journey package with the Navigo card and €16 for an origin-destination ticket to Orly or Roissy airports. Other tourist packages were suspended, but Navigo and Navigo Liberté+ transport tickets remained unchanged for subscribers in Île-de-France.


Several major public transport projects were undertaken or brought forward for the games, with extensions of existing Paris Métro and RER lines as well as new tram lines. Projects included:


Extension of Line 4 to the south to Bagneux–Lucie Aubrac, with two new stations. This opened in January 2022.
Extension of Line 11 to the east to Rosny–Bois-Perrier, with six new stations. This opened in June 2024.
Extension of Line 12 to the north to Mairie d'Aubervilliers, with two new stations. This opened in May 2022.
Extension of Line 14 to the north to Mairie de Saint-Ouen, with four new stations. This opened in December 2020.
A further extension of Line 14 to the north to a new station at Saint-Denis–Pleyel. This opened in June 2024. A new bridge over the Paris-Lille railway lines connects the station to Stade de France–Saint-Denis on RER D, as well as to the nearby Stade de France.
Extension of Line 14 to the south to Orly Airport, with six new stations. This opened in June 2024.
Extension of RER E to Nanterre–La Folie station, with three new stations. This opened in May 2024.
Four new tram lines in the Île-de-France region opened since 2020, and some existing lines were extended (such as tramway 3b to Porte Dauphine).
Métro and RER lines were also upgraded and improved, with new trains (including the MP 14 and RER NG) and Line 4 was converted to fully automated operation.
Some transport projects such as Line 15 and CDG Express (an express link to Charles de Gaulle Airport) were not completed in time for the games—with opening dates of 2026 and 2027 respectively.


Before services were increased during the Olympics and Paralympics, they were reduced to allow drivers to take leave. The usual reduced summer service was brought forward a week. Except for RER A and B, lines K, U and R, tram lines T4, T11, T12 and T13, services were reduced by more than 10%. The reduced service was particularly noticeable on RER C and Transilien Line N, where the quarter-hourly frequency was not maintained, leading to wait times of 30 minutes at Clamart station.
During the Olympic Games period, however, the service was increased on key routes. While areas such as the south-east of Paris were not affected much by travel motivated by the Olympic Games, the busiest lines were Métro lines 8, 9, 10, 12, 13, and 14. Lines 1, 5, and 6 were also affected due to the fan zones or places of celebration that they served. On the Transilien network, lines J (Argenteuil branch), L, N, P and U were all affected, as well as the T3b tramway, the T11 and T13 tramway expresses, and RER B, C and D.
To absorb the additional passengers, services were increased by 15% compared to a normal summer. Thus, RER C, whose central section is usually closed for works over summer, saw its frequency increased to one train every five minutes. Similarly, Transilien Line J was increased between Gare Saint-Lazare and Le Stade station to serve the Yves-du-Manoir stadium in Colombes, with eight trains per hour, even during off-peak times, instead of the usual four. On Transilien Line P, there were six trains per hour to Vaires-sur-Marne, and on Line N, four trains per hour.


A project that called for a major modification of Gare du Nord station by 2024 was abandoned in favour of a scaled-down €50 million project. For Eurostar, the international high-speed rail service connecting Western Europe, the number of automatic passport readers at the Gare du Nord was increased from 5 to 10 to streamline the boarding formalities that had been lengthened by the withdrawal of the United Kingdom from the European Union. The Transilien platform escalators were modernized and the RER platforms given increased space. The Gare du Nord's forecourt was redeveloped and reserved for pedestrians, with the taxi rank transferred to the underground car parks, and the east side of the station received a new bus station and a secure bicycle hall with 1,200 spaces.
Improvements were also made to Vaires–Torcy station, which served the Vaires-sur-Marne Nautical Stadium, the venue for rowing and canoeing events, to make it accessible to people with disabilities. Accessibility and capacity works were also undertaken at Saint-Denis station. During the games, cleaning was stepped up in 120 stations impacted by the increased number of passengers.
Stations too close to the venues for festivities or competitions were closed for security reasons, most notably the Concorde and Tuileries Métro stations, Tuileries was near where the cauldron of the Olympic Games was located. The Concorde station, near the BMX freestyle, breaking, skateboarding and 3 × 3 basketball competition site at the Place de la Concorde, was closed on Line 12 from 17 May to 22 September, and access to the Concorde and Tuileries stations was suspended from 17 June to 1 September. The Champs-Élysées–Clemenceau station (lines 1 and 13), also near the Place de la Concorde, was closed from 20 July to 11 August for the Olympics, and then from 20 August to 8 September for the Paralympics. A week before the Olympic opening ceremony, around ten stations overlooking the Seine were closed.


In the 20 years leading up to the games, substantial investment was made to facilitate walking and cycling in Paris, including pedestrianisation of public spaces such as the Place de la République, and the introduction of Vélib' (a bicycle sharing system) and bicycle lanes. By April 2024, cycling was more popular than driving in the centre of Paris.
New infrastructure connected to the games was initially limited, with the completion of cycle paths on the right bank of the Saint-Denis Canal and the Olympic Village footbridge. In 2022, the Collectif vélo Île-de-France pointed out that 90% of Olympic sites were not easily accessible by bicycle.
The significant growth of the use of cycling in Paris and the inner suburbs following the COVID-19 pandemic, together with fears about the reliability of the public transport network, led to the integration of cycling into the transport plan during the Olympic Games. For the games, 60 kilometres (37 mi) of cycle lanes linked all venues to each other and 27,000 temporary bicycle racks were installed.
The Société de livraison des ouvrages olympiques ("Olympic Works Delivery Company") (Solidéo) co-financed the creation of a cycling infrastructure for use during the games and afterwards, including the Dugny footbridge at Le Bourget, the Franc-Moisin footbridge at Saint-Denis, and the Olympic Village footbridge (the only one reserved for delegations during the Olympic and Paralympic Games).


Apart from the Villepinte site, all venues had cycle paths and bicycle parking facilities. The Olympic venues were accessible by 418 km (260 mi) of cycle paths, including 55 km (34 mi) of "Olympistes" cycle paths (30 in Paris and 25 in Seine-Saint-Denis) developed during the year preceding the Olympic Games. Although cycling was a recommended mode of transport during the Olympic Games, some usual routes were closed, notably at the Place de la Concorde.


As with previous Olympic and Paralympic Games, the road network of Paris and the Île-de-France region had lanes of traffic reserved for accredited vehicles to guarantee journey times between the Olympic Village, venues and other destinations, such as the Main Press Centre at Palais des congrès de Paris. During the competition period, 185 kilometres (115 mi) of roads in the Paris region were partially reserved for accredited persons, transport and emergency services by the decree of 4 May 2022. Toyota supplied organisers with a fleet of vehicles that included 500 Mirai fuel cell vehicles. Some 1,000 buses were available to transport athletes and accredited personnel. Ten special shuttle routes were provided to take accredited personnel to venues remote from railways stations. A temporary bus station was built on the eastern edge of the Olympic Village to transport athletes and support staff to the competition and training sites.


Izivia, a subsidiary of Électricité de France (EDF), installed nearly 800 temporary electric charging stations, mostly near Porte Maillot, the Athletes' Village and Le Bourget. After the games, these were removed and reused by EDF at its own sites to power its electric vehicle fleet. More than 3.1 million km was driven in renewable electric Paris 2024 vehicles during the games, consumed 474 MWh. The electricity was supplied by EDF from six wind and two solar generation sites.
Compared to a normal summer, the frequency of bus services was higher during the games, but almost all routes in Paris were modified. Due to the areas occupied by the competition or celebration sites, several bus lines had to be diverted before, during, and after the Olympic Games. Sixteen bus routes were diverted for the duration of the games, starting with 10 early in the year to permit the assembly of certain installations, with six other bus routes diverted in May and then in early June.
During the Olympics, 190 bus routes (58% of the 330 RATP routes in the "central zone") had to be modified at one time or another, with simultaneous peaks of over 100 on 26 July, the day of the opening ceremony, and on 3 August for the road cycling race. The Noctilien night bus network was reinforced during the events, particularly near festive venues such as the Grande halle de la Villette, with three services per hour instead of two. Full details of traffic restrictions were not announced until March 2024, making it difficult for transport and public works companies to plan their operations for the summer of 2024.


During the Olympic and Paralympic Games, one lane on certain roads was reserved between 06:00 and midnight for vehicles of persons accredited by COJOP, taxis, public transport vehicles, vehicles intended to facilitate the transport of persons with reduced mobility, and emergency and security vehicles. Checks were undertaken with automatic number-plate recognition, and violations of the rules were punishable by a fine of €135.
Roads with reserved lanes included the A1 autoroute from Roissy to Porte de la Chapelle, the A4 autoroute between Collégien and Porte de Bercy, the A13 autoroute between Porte Maillot and Rocquencourt, the A12 autoroute between Rocquencourt and Montigny-le-Bretonneux and route nationale 13, the Boulevard Périphérique between Porte de Sèvres and Porte de Bercy, and the Quai de Bercy.
To allow easy access to and from the Olympic Village, the A1 autoroute ramps from Place de la Porte-de-Paris to Saint-Denis were closed to general traffic. To maintain the possibility of entering and exiting the A86 autoroute, the Pleyel interchange was rebuilt with two new traffic directions.


The branch of the Seine which passes through the Olympic Village in Seine-Saint-Denis to the north of Paris was closed from mid-July to 8 September. River traffic was transferred to the West arm. Not normally used, the section of river required improvements to make it navigable, such as dredging and piloting facilities, at a cost of €15 million. Navigation on the Seine was prohibited around the Olympic opening ceremony on 26 July, and for open water swimming and triathlon events.


Paris is served by two large international airports: Charles de Gaulle Airport and Orly Airport. Both are connected to the Paris public transport network, with the opening of the extension of Paris Métro Line 14 to Orly Airport just prior to the games. CDG Express – an express line connecting Charles de Gaulle Airport to Gare de l'Est in the city centre – was not completed in time for the games, and will open in 2027. Charles de Gaulle and Orly airports had to handle a large proportion of the arrivals and departures of 64,000 accredited persons and 47,000 items of sports equipment, including 4,000 large items such as kayaks and bicycles. The flows were massive, particularly from 18 July, the opening date of the Olympic Village, after the Olympic closing ceremony, and again before and after the Paralympic Games. Some private jets also arrived at Paris–Le Bourget Airport. For security reasons, the airspace across northern France was closed during the Olympics opening ceremony.
The organisers estimated that more than a third of the greenhouse gas emissions linked to the Olympic Games would be from the transport of athletes and spectators. While it was difficult to avoid air transport for most national delegations, the Belgian, British and Dutch national committees committed to arriving by train. To facilitate the movement of delegations from the Olympic Village to the Paris region airports, Groupe ADP (which owns and operates the Paris airports) built a baggage check-in area at the Olympic Village, so the largest bags could be transported directly to the airports.


On 26 July 2024, the day of the opening ceremony of the 2024 Summer Olympics, a series of arson attacks damaged the LGV Atlantique, Nord, and Est lines of the French high-speed railway system. International and domestic rail services were widely disrupted, with around 800,000 passengers affected. There was also an attempted attack on the LGV Sud-Est line, though it was interrupted by TGV maintenance workers who happened to be on site.


In addition to the venues in the Paris region, there were ten Olympic venues elsewhere in France. Six were soccer stadiums: Nouveau Stade de Bordeaux; Stade Geoffroy-Guichard, Saint-Étienne; Stade de la Beaujoire, Nantes; Parc Olympique Lyonnais, Lyon; Stade Vélodrome, Marseille; and the Stade de Nice. Four other events were also held outside Paris: sailing at Marseille Marina; shooting at the National Shooting Centre in Châteauroux; basketball and handball at the Stade Pierre-Mauroy in Lille; and, most incongruously of all, surfing at Teahupo'o in Tahiti. The only Paralympic event held outside Paris was the shooting at Châteauroux.
The Stade Pierre-Mauroy in Lille was an hour's train ride from Paris, plus a bus or tram ride; Line 1 (yellow) stopped outside the stadium. The marina and velodrome in Marseille could be can be accessed from the Rond-Point du Prado and Sainte-Marguerite Dromel métro stations on Line 2. Châteauroux was a 2+1⁄4-hour train ride from Paris, and had an extensive bus network. Lyon had an extensive bus and tram network, and the stadium could be accessed by the T3 or T7 Lyon tramway from Lyon-Part-Dieu station. Nice, Saint-Etienne and Bordeaux also had facilities for bicycles, with Bordeaux signposting a 7-kilometre (4.3 mi) bicycle route to the stadium.


Paris 2024's goal of halving carbon emissions was ultimately met, with an estimated 1.59 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent. This represented a 54.6% reduction compared to the London and Rio average. Of this, 53% of the carbon footprint (about 833,600 tonnes of CO2 equivalent) was incurred by people travelling to the games. This was greater than anticipated: partly because ticket sales exceeded expectations, and partly because a large number of spectators came from outside Europe. With ticket sales of €1,489 million, Paris 2024 exceeded its ticketing and hospitality revenue targets by €348 million, and generated a surplus of more than €26.8 million.
All of the venues were served by public transport, and three-quarters of those in the Île-de France region had a public transport stop within 500 metres. As a result, 87% of spectators used public transport to attend the games. The provision of 415 kilometres (258 mi) of cycling routes and 27,000 temporary bicycle places enabled 5% of spectators to cycle during the games. The transport effort was judged a success. This was attributed to the anticipation and preparation carried out over the previous eight years. Forecasts of spectator travel proved accurate, and no major incident was reported as millions of users were carried during the summer, even during the back-to-school period towards the end of the Paralympics.


The True Record (simplified Chinese: 真相画报; traditional Chinese: 真相畫報; pinyin: Zhēnxiāng Huàbào) was a pictorial magazine published in Shanghai, China, between June 1912 and March or April 1913. The magazine was established by brothers Gao Qifeng and Gao Jianfu as the nascent Republic of China was seeking to develop a new culture after centuries of Qing rule. It sought to monitor the new republic, report the welfare of the people, promote socialism, and distribute world knowledge. Under the Gaos and fellow editor Huang Binhong, the magazine published seventeen issues and expanded its reach from China through Southeast Asia and to Hawaii. Fervently supportive of Sun Yat-sen and the nationalist movement, the magazine was critical of Provisional President Yuan Shikai and closed during a time when he was consolidating his power.
Produced using a combination of copperplate printing and collotype, The True Record featured colourful covers as well as numerous photographs and illustrations. Between its pages, seven types of imagery were included, from paintings and photographs to satirical manhua. Articles covered such topics as traditional and modern art, current events, technological innovations, and politics; works of creative writing were also included. Essays called for the creation of a "new national art", as well as the expansion of the national economy through industrial art and other means. Despite having been published for less than one year, The True Record has been described as one of the most important illustrated magazines of the first years of the Republic of China.


In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the Qing dynasty – which had ruled China since the 17th century – faced growing opposition from various revolutionary groups. After a series of failed uprisings, in October 1911 an uprising broke out in Wuchang that spread through the country. Yuan Shikai, the General of the Beiyang Army, was initially tasked with ending the rebellion. Ultimately, he allied with the rebels, and negotiated the abdication of Emperor Puyi. The Republic of China was proclaimed on 1 January 1912, with Sun Yat-sen, the leader of the Tongmenghui, a major resistance group, as its provisional president.
As the nascent nation sought a new culture, the philosopher and revolutionary Cai Yuanpei advocated for using aesthetic education to cultivate awareness of its needs. Nineteen magazines began publication in this era, collectively serving to capitalize on demand for new, modern materials. Unlike earlier Chinese publications, which often produced using woodblock printing on soft paper and bound in plain paper or cloth, these new magazines used modern printing technology and illustrated covers. The True Record was one such magazine, though according to Julia F. Andrews of Ohio State University, it was characterized more by its political mission than the commercial enterprises of its contemporaries.


The True Record was established by Gao Qifeng and Gao Jianfu, artists from Guangdong who, while studying in Japan in the late 1900s, had joined the Tongmenghui. They returned to China in 1908, with Gao Jianfu leading a revolutionary cell that was responsible for several assassinations. Gao Qifeng became the editor-in-chief of the new magazine and Gao Jianfu and Huang Binhong became supporting editors. Also involved were several alumni of the Journal of Current Pictorial including He Jianshi and Zheng Leiquan (鄭磊泉), who had used their manhua (comics) to criticize the Qing dynasty. Another artist, Kwan Wai-nung, travelled from Hong Kong to contribute to the publication. Further contributions came from Chen Shuren, a colleague of the Gaos in Japan, and Xu Beihong, an employee of their bookstore.
Headquartered at No. 4 Road, Huifu Lane, Shanghai, The True Record provided the mailing address of 45 Wei Foo Lee (Foochow Road) on its cover. In February 1913, operations moved to Middle Section No. 84, Chessboard Street, also in Shanghai. Publication was handled by the Aesthetic Institute, a combined gallery, exhibition hall, and publishing house that also sold reproductions of Chinese and western paintings. The Commerce Culture Print Shop did the printing, using a combination of copperplate printing and collotype.
Some photography for The True Record was provided by the Guangdong-based China Photo Team (中华写真队), which had been established by Sun with the support of the provincial government to cover republican war efforts; funding for the magazine's publication has also been alleged to have come from the government. After The True Record published its second issue, the China Photo Team – headquartered at Provincial Capital Bund No. 2 Road in Guangzhou – was rebranded the Guangdong Branch of the True Record Press. Distribution of the magazine was handled by both the Shanghai and Guangdong offices.


The first edition of The True Record was published on 5 June 1912. It was prefaced by introductions from Li Huaishuang (李怀霜), Xie Yingbo (谢英伯), and Hu Hanmin, all of whom were Tongmenghui members. In his contribution, Li introduced Gao Qifeng, highlighting his revolutionary activities, and provided the magazine's mission statement: to monitor the new republic, report the welfare of the people, promote socialism, and distribute world knowledge. Initially, The True Record was scheduled to publish a new issue every ten days, with a target of ten-thousand words per issue. The price was a quarter yuan (equivalent to ¥43 in 2019) per copy, or seven yuan (equivalent to ¥1,200 in 2019) for a one-year subscription – expected to be 36 issues. This schedule was ultimately not realized and publication was irregular.


Over time, The True Record expanded its reach. Initially distributed throughout China via its offices in Shanghai and Guangdong, by the fourth issue a branch office had been established at the Cao Wanfeng Bookstore in Singapore, serving Southeast Asia. Distribution had reached Honolulu, Hawaii, by the seventh issue. As the magazine expanded its distribution networks, it sought to internationalize. With the third issue, the English-language title The True Record was provided alongside a mailing address. The subtitle "Illustrated Magazine" was included beginning with the fourth issue. Captions were provided in English and Chinese.


In February 1912, President Sun had ceded leadership of the republic to Yuan, honouring an earlier agreement. As the new provisional president consolidated his power, he began to suppress the Nationalist Party – which dominated the 1912 National Assembly election – and curtail its activities, with publications deemed too critical of his government censored. In March 1913, Song Jiaoren was assassinated at Shanghai station, with Yuan rumoured to have been involved; a nationalist leader, Song had broad popular support and had openly opposed Yuan.
The True Record closed during this period, publishing its seventeenth and final issue in March or April 1913. Sources differ as to the reason. The comics scholar Wendy Siuyi Wong writes that the magazine was banned; this is supported by Tang Hongfeng of Beijing Normal University, who suggests that its implication of Yuan and Zhao Bingjun in Song's assassination was the deciding factor. The art historian Christina Chu describes the magazine as closing after government funding was pulled; this is supported by Andrews, who notes that the magazine's lavish production values would have limited its commercial viability without subsidies, as well as the art historian Ralph Croizier, who writes that the magazine had difficulty attracting advertisers.
Many of the magazine's staff left Shanghai after its closure. Zheng fled to Hong Kong, dying there by the end of the decade. Kwan returned to Hong Kong, where he used the tiger-painting techniques he had learned from the Gaos to advertise Tiger Balm. Gao Qifeng may have undergone a self-imposed exile in Japan, where he had studied the previous decade, returning some time later. Such flights were common among nationalists, with Sun escaping to Japan in August 1913.


The True Record was printed in black ink on thin acid paper. Covers used higher quality paper, allowing the printing of half-tone colour illustrations. Some issues featured colour insets and many contained fold-outs that could be removed for display. Issues were 18 by 27 centimetres (7.1 in × 10.6 in) in size, and ranged in length from fifty to eighty pages.


The Gao brothers believed that pictorials could best serve to educate the populace, as contemporary literacy rates were low and thus images had further reach than text. Consequently, imagery was extensively used in The True Record. In the first issue, the magazine enumerated seven types of images that it sought to publish: historical painting, art painting, photographic paintings of geology, parodic paintings, photographic paintings of current affairs, photographic paintings of scenic spots, and paintings of current affairs.
The use of thick paper allowed The True Record to feature extensive colour on its covers. Subjects were diverse, but often involved individuals uncovering a truth. The cover of the first edition depicted a young artist, garbed in clothing reflective of a Western bohemian, sitting on a stool and leaning toward a banner bearing the title of the magazine. The cover of the third issue, published on 1 July 1912, depicted a man in a western suit pulling a curtain back, revealing the Chinese word 真相 ("truth"). The final issue of The True Record depicted a man in Western garb, looking into a mirror and seeing the spirit of a Mandarin; Tang suggests that this was intended to criticize Yuan Shikai. Many of these covers were produced by Gao Qifeng.
The pages of The True Record contained numerous paintings by the Gaos and other artists, with two issues including sections dedicated to the staff artists. Tigers were commonly depicted, allegorically calling for boldness and bravery in the nation-building process; lions and eagles, favourites of Gao Qifeng that were understood to reflect a revolutionary spirit, also appeared. Political manhua, satirizing topics that ranged from political parties and corruption to misers and social parasites, were included in many issues. Some are signed, generally with pseudonyms, while others are uncredited.
Almost two hundred photographs were included in The True Record throughout its run, including thirty in the first issue alone. The political activities of Sun Yat-sen were covered extensively, with a particular focus on his interactions with the common person. Military subjects such as field exercises and the naval fleet were frequently depicted as well. International stories also featured, with three issues including coverage of the Balkan Wars.


Art was frequently discussed in the articles of The True Record. In essays, the Gaos called for the creation of a "new national art", based on the synthesis of traditional Chinese painting with foreign art, as well as improvements in art education. Huang decried the abstraction of literati approaches to landscape painting and urged greater verisimilitude. Chen, over the course of fifteen issues, serialized his translation of a Japanese book on new painting methods derived from western traditions. Excluding certain chapters, such as discussions of watercolour, his adaptation also expanded its coverage to include references to ancient masters such as Wang Wei and Wu Daozi.