The sun beat down into a huge plastic bubble dome on the banks of the Thames, Greenwich, as Sarah Burton showed her latest collection for Alexander McQueen on Tuesday afternoon.
Burton, who worked as the house founder Lee Alexander McQueen’s personal assistant since 1997, took the opportunity to pay tribute to the late designer she developed under, by weaving images of Dutch artist Hieronymus Bosch to her body-conscious and sleek tailored collection. “He really loved it,” she said of Bosch’s vast works, which often involve the flourishing natural world plagued with human violence and miniature demons.
“It feels like we are in another Dark Ages, in a way,” she continued post show. “Death, destruction and beauty is something we’ve always looked at McQueen.”
The late 15th and early 16th century paintings were woven into McQueen’s final ‘Angels & Demons’ Autumn-Winter 2010-11 collection, which was finished by Burton and staff and shown posthumously after McQueen took his life 11 February 2010.
Burton did them differently this time. Her’s came bright in a zingy, collaged print, and used for cut-out catsuits, a body suit with half a skirt attached and a sculptural, strapless gown. Her perspective to design is contrasting too, she says. “It’s always about a woman dressing for a woman. It’s not a male gaze.”
Sex appeal still ruled. Gowns were cut out to reveal whole legs, jackets came backless or sliced to reveal front facing pelvic muscles, and ultra-low rise trousers flirted with McQueen’s original ‘bumster’ designs (trousers cut so low you could see two cheeks meet, first shown for SS94).
“How do you play with the proportions of the body and reveal bits without it being completely overt in a way,” Burton said of her inspiration. “How do you subtly play with the proportions of your own body – that’s where it started.”
Naomi Campbell took a lap wearing a crystal embellished catsuit emblazoned with a huge eyeball – a recurring motif this season, sparked by the creative director recently reading George Orwell’s dystopian novel 1984. “It’s very much about each as an individual, that’s why the eye in important – each one is like a fingerprint of your own identity,” Burton also said.
And cheering on from the front row inside the Old Royal Naval College grounds, which today is a music school, was singer Janet Jackson, actors Letitia Wright and Joe Locke and Kering’s CEO François-Henri Pinault.
“I love showing in London,” said Burton. “You’ve got this incredible music school which was a naval college full of so much history, and across the river you’ve got the modern city. That’s the great thing about London, old and new survive hand in hand somehow.”
And in a collection which traced the steps of her predecessor, old and new survived hand in hand on the catwalk too.
