The collection that Greatest British designer Alexander McQueen was working on when he committed suicide in London almost a month ago was presented on the very day it was supposed to take place. The event had the atmosphere of a requiem. The 16 outfits shown had been 80 percent finished at the time of his death.
What McQueen was preparing had a poetic, medieval beauty that dealt with religious iconography while recapturing memories of his own past collections. He had ordered fabric that translated digital photographs of paintings of high-church angels and Bosch demons into hand-loomed jacquards, then taken the materials and cut stately caped gowns and short draped dresses.
The designs were heavily religious, inspired by Byzantine art and masters like Botticelli, Jean Hey and Hieronymus Bosch.
Seven models processed in courtly fashion through a gilded, mirrored, first-floor salon, walking slowly to the same baroque, operatic works the late designer was listening to as he worked on the collection at his studio in London, before his sudden and unexpected death.
The designs were vivid, dramatic and evocative, the underlying religious theme echoed again and again in sumptuous, gold, ecclesiastical embroideries; in silk jacquard woven with patterns of angels and angels’ wings; in the hand-painted gold feathers visible under the draped skirt of a one-shouldered, short gown; and in the stained glass, church- window jewellery which filled the necklines of sharply cut peplum-jackets and dresses, and adorned the wrists.
The sombre music, sung by the German coloratura soprano, Simone Kermes, and including Dido’s Lament from Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas, intensified the solemnity of the occasion.
The dark, irreverent side of McQueen’s vision and his love of panoply were apparent in a spectral, black, floor-length cloak, encrusted with gilded tigers and heraldic embroidery; and in a long, cardinal-like cape with crimson column dress beneath, bristling with thousands of rustling gold sequins as the model walked across the parquet floor. The models’ heads were wrapped in cloth painted with strokes of grey and gold paint, others with gold or silver feathered mohawks.
It would have been a spectacular catwalk show, in the great tradition of Lee Alexander McQueen.
