The Hunger was the seventh collection by British designer Alexander McQueen, shown for the Spring/Summer 1996 season of his own fashion house. It drew its inspiration from The Hunger, a 1983 erotic horror film about vampires, and was made on a very small budget. The runway show took place at London's Natural History Museum on 23 October 1995, during London Fashion Week. Its centrepiece was a corset of translucent plastic with real worms encased inside, and the models' styling mixed sexuality, violence and death, as was typical of McQueen's early shows. Critics were divided, with some praising it as a highlight of a dull season and others attacking the work as immature or misogynistic. Today it is studied for its cinematic influences and its gothic imagery, and garments from the collection appeared in both stagings of the Savage Beauty retrospective.

Hampi is a UNESCO World Heritage Site in Karnataka, India, with more than 1,600 surviving remains spread over 4,100 hectares. It was the capital of the Vijayanagara Empire from 1336 to 1565. Travellers from Persia and Portugal described it as a prosperous, wealthy and grand city with temples, markets and farms along the Tungabhadra River. By 1500 it was estimated to be the world's second-largest city after Beijing, and probably India's richest at the time. In 1565 a coalition of Muslim sultanates defeated the Vijayanagara Empire, its capital was conquered and destroyed, and the city was left in ruins. Hampi remains a religious centre, with the active Virupaksha Temple at its heart.