THE first that she’s put on since the Royal Wedding – and only the third since she took over as creative director after Lee McQueen’s death, tonight’s show by Sarah Burton for Alexander McQueen was yet another brilliant display of everything he taught her and everything she’s done with it.
“The weight of expectation doesn’t let up on her,” said Alexandra Shulman afterwards. “But she is brilliant at this job. She seems to take all his trademarks and somehow give them a lightness. It was really fantastic, triumphant even.”
The corsetry, the tailoring and even the expertly lace-bound heads – which graduated later to masks of clustered shells that rendered faces featureless – all typified McQueen, even the narrow skirts pulled in tight under shapely, moulded jackets. “And yet somehow they were still free,” went on Alexandra. “There’s a softness to it that means they’re not constrained which I used to think some of Lee’s women were.”
It was one of those shows that genuinely took your breath and made you pleased you’d been trailing around the world watching fashion shows for a month because, well, this was why: brilliant ideas, magnificently executed and beautiful to watch.
It began with nude skirt suits whose curtain tassel hemlines had been dipped in gold. They had elaborate embellished shoulders and stiff, multiple peplums that rode around the body and then bounced down to meet a backwards kick-pleated skirt.
From nude, it bled to lavender and the inner construction of the dresses were then revealed as the lower halves expanded: great bunches of light, gathered chiffon foamed like ostrich bodies beneath caged corsets - the prettiness of coral and pale pink belying the eerie discomfort that those facial wrappings ignite.
The silhouette then came back in tight as nude lace sheaths were smothered in vacuum wrapped, fine black leather as if a colony of bats were consuming the model, and then macramé lace bodices fell to trains of mother of pearl. Some dresses had a lichen of shells and beads growing up the body , others encased the bodies in silver and gold ripples. If the aquatic theme that has been emerging over the past few weeks needed a resolution, this fantastical mermaid is surely where it’s been heading.
Burton and McQueen share such a strong stylistic lexicon, it makes you wonder about the dynamic in the studio when they worked together – which idea came from whom and who developed it? Certainly every show that Burton has produced since his death has been a celebration of his talent, and how better to honour his memory than that?
SEE THE ALEXANDER MCQUEEN SHOW ARCHIVE