FORCE OF NATURE
Ever-changing London skies were the inspiration behind ALEXANDER MCQUEEN’s latest dazzling collection.
“IF YOU DON’T LIKE THE WEATHER, WAIT FIVE MINUTES” is something Mark Twain once said about New England, but it could easily have been meant for London, England, a city whose skies often light up, cloud over, erupt and light up again in a single day. It’s this mercurial climate that inspired Alexander McQueen creative director Sarah Burton when she designed the spring/summer 2022 collection, which would be not only the house’s first to be shown on a real runway in over a year but also its first to be shown in the city in 20 years. (The brand had been presenting in Paris for the past two decades.) And that same ever-changing weather gave a perfect performance one day last October, when Alexander McQueen topped an 11-storey East End car park with a giant cloudlike bubble for the show to take place in, with full views of the mutable London skies. As the models began to walk the runway, a ray of sunshine pierced through the parting heavy clouds, bathing attendees in what felt like an optimistic glow. “I felt like it was this idea of [the weather] being completely uncontrollable,” Burton said of the collection in the post-show scrum. “You don’t know what it’s going to be, so you have to be brave and deal with it.”
This season, Alexander McQueen women are storm chasers. They “chase danger, face danger, see beauty!” said Burton. And they do so in crystal-covered double-breasted suits, trench coats with exaggerated parachute sleeves and dazzling silk corset dresses with crystal-raindrop embroidery. They—like all of us—have weathered the turbulence of the past two years and come out stronger for it. “You want there to be a sense of release and freedom, but I still feel there are moments of both sadness and joy,” she said. “It’s
not about forgetting what happened; it’s almost like embracing what happened and what might come.” As such, there were nods to that signature Alexander McQueen grit: Models in zippered leather jackets clomped by in heavy
“rave” Chelsea boots, their tattoos and piercings proudly on display. Casting was more diverse than ever this season, with many in the group chosen for their distinct personalities. “When I was designing, sometimes they’d come in and I’d put a dress on them and know that it wasn’t right, so I’d change it to a suit [to make them feel] like a heightened version of themselves without obliterating who they are,” said Burton. There were also dresses made with prints of photographs that were taken from the Alexander McQueen studio balcony. “You can see St. Paul’s Cathedral and the Shard; you can see all of this old and new, and in the beginning I thought maybe [the print] should be the skyscape, but actually it was nature, it was sky, it was unpredictability and wildness,” said Burton.
The past two years have been marked by incredible change for Alexander McQueen. Named one of parent company Kering’s fastest-growing brands, it has been expanding across the globe to locations that include Las Vegas, Shanghai and Toronto, where it recently opened a 370-square-metre Canadian flagship at Yorkdale Shopping Centre—the latest in a long-standing collaboration between Burton and Chilean architect Smiljan Radic, who’s known for his use of natural materials. In the boutique, sustainably sourced oak and walnut live beside “cotton-crete”—a papier-mâché wall cladding made from concrete and cotton recycled from garment production.
“It’s not about forgetting what happened; it’s almost like embracing what happened and what might come.”
These references to nature hold a deeper meaning for Alexander McQueen, whose founder, Lee Alexander McQueen—a proponent of political messaging through his designs—issued a warning about climate change with his spring/summer 2010 Plato’s Atlantis collection. The show—the first to be livestreamed and the last he was alive to direct—imagined a future in which humans are forced to live underwater, with models dressed in reptilian patterns and silhouettes that felt at once alien and animal. Fast-forward to today and Burton still holds those values close to her heart. “We should be protecting nature,” she said. As such, the collection features sustainable materials like recycled poly taffeta, poly faille and chrome-free leather. The show space—that magical transparent cloud—was also designed by Radic to be reused for some dreamlike setting in the near future.
The day after the show, guests were invited back to the bubble to see the clothes up close. The skies had shifted, making the space moody and dark. By contrast, the crystal embroidery on the dresses, double-breasted suits and knee-high boots shone like glittery sunshine breaking through after a storm. It felt like a metaphor for what we’ve been through these past two years—moments of both sadness and joy.