Models: Ella Slater and Solenne Choi Photography, creative direction and styling: Emily Gleeson
From left, backstage at ‘The Horn of Plenty’ AW09, photographed by Robert Faierer McQueen working on the collection, early 2009 photographed by Nick Waplington
What would Lee Alexander McQueen be warning us of todayrace riots, a calamitous Brexit, or a virus which would leave us yearning for connection? As Sarah Burton unveils her take on the pandemic for pre Spring Summer 2021, Ella Slater explores the prophetic nature of many of her predecessor’s collections.
Two months before the turn of the century, in November 1999’s US Vogue, Plum Sykes pondered upon the New Year’s Eve plans of fashion types. “Most millennial partiers are suffering from pre-traumatic stress disorder,” she wrote. “Style types particularly hysterical about possibility of hysteria.” Y2K created global anxiety eerily resemblant of that surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic, albeit less founded. Yet 2000’s hysteria did not really concern the apocalypse, nor the anti-Christ, but a fear of technological revolution; the fracturing of society. As the millennium neared, Alexander McQueen’s notoriety rose. A somewhat controversial figure, his technical skill and ability to shock was undeniable, but his motives were questioned. “He has a perverse view of women,” Marion Hume wrote after McQueen’s SS94 ‘Nihilism’ collection; a presumption which would haunt his career. “But he has an assured view of fashion.”
Givenchy haute couture, AW97-98 ‘Eclect Dissect’, via pinterest.com
McQueen’s clothes were sensual and sad; reflecting both his own turmoil and that of the world around him. Delicate Chinese silks alongside a hat of needle-sharp pheasant feathers, Burmese Kayak rings of searing metal atop a flash of nipple; ‘Eclect Dissect’, Givenchy’s AW97-98 couture collection, was an achingly erotic premonition of millennial anxiety, built around H.G.Wells’ The Island of Doctor Moreau. Colin McDowell, writing in the Sunday Times afterwards, called it “a parade of amazing dresses, individually impressive, but signifying little... Overall what came through was McQueen’s aggression.”
McDowell was wrong. The clothes were macabre, but the 19th century tale of a surgeon creating humanbeast hybrids reflected a morbid fear of Science at the time, just as ‘Eclect Dissect’ did the millennial fear of technology.
“McQueen’s clothes were sensual and sad; reflecting both his own turmoil and that of the world around him.”
As the 21st century neared, frenzy increased; Time magazine’s January 1999 issue had ‘The End of the World!?!’ scrawled violently across its cover, inside recording the doomsday preparations of an Ohio family (lecturing Girl Scouts and stocking up on firearms- a notably American
reaction to any crisis). A month later, as Bruce and Dianne counted the cans of chicken chow mein in their basement, McQueen presented his AW99 Givenchy collection, or as Vogue called it, “Android Couture”. A cyborg (model) stalking the runway in LED lights became a poignant symbol of the Y2K bug; a tribute to Stanley Kubrick’s apocalyptic 2001: A Space Odyssey. Gisele wore a sculpted leather bodice the colour of fresh blood, the sharpness of her eyes almost as biting as that of her bobbed hair. This was new age Givenchy. With hindsight, the anxieties of the past seem trivial, ridiculous even. Yet they were real, and now immortalised, in silhouettes, textiles, cuts and colours.
The collections preceding McQueen’s death in 2010 were equally as haunting and beautiful as those a decade earlier. One of McQueen’s most poignant prophesies was AW09 ‘The Horn of Plenty’, a comment on fashion’s relentless obsolescence, increasing corporatisation and the unsustainability of an annual cycle which prompted designers like Helmut Lang and Martin Margiela to escape. McQueen was not one to overlook humour, however. Joseph Bennett, who was his production designer for numerous shows post millenium, talks of plans to dress McQueen as a rat for the finale. Were elaborate shows McQueen’s
Left, Liberty Ross in ‘Eclect Dissect’ dress and Philip Treacy mask, photographed by Nick Knight for ‘Isabella Blow: Fashion Galore’ , 2013 Above right, Givenchy AW99, via Conde Nast Archive
sandals, the livestream which crashed because of one celebrity’s tweet. ‘Plato’s Atlantis’ seems to forewarn of a world in which nature and human progress cannot coincide peacefully. Now, 30 years on from the designer’s enrolment at Central Saint Martins and 10 from his death, London battles a global pandemic, an impending Brexit, an education
“He’s not just a fashion designer, he’s way more than that;he blurred the boundaries of what fine art is.”
escape route from fashion? In 2009 he gained a place at the Slade to study MA Fine Art. “He’s not just a fashion designer,” Bennett attests, “he blurred the boundaries of what fine art is. But in the end, fashion gave him the vehicle of being able to do these shows.” What would McQueen have thought about the state of the industry today? A man obsessed with nature, broken-
system preoccupied with money. Our divisions are exposed by the very systems which perpetuate them: social media, politics, violence. Last Thursday Sarah Burton presented the McQueen SS21 womenswear pre-collection, formed of assertively feminine and soft silhouettes; tailored pantsuits and debutante dresses of powder pink. The clothes were beautiful, constructed from previous hearted by society; it is harder to imagine what he wouldn’t have done seasons’ discarded fabrics, but their escapism was a far cry from the brutal by now. SS10 ‘Plato’s Atlantis’ was honesty of Burton’s predecessor. one of McQueen’s most moving odes to the natural world. Panniered Burton, who began as an intern for hips and protruding shoulders, in prints of rich earth and aqua, formed McQueen in 1996, took the helm of the eponymous brand following a fantasy in which humankind his death. “How the hell do you would either morph into mythical underwater beings, or perish forever. follow that?” Bennett says. “By trying to do shows like him, you’re only It is poignant to look back on; the going to do pastiches of what they digital printing, the science-fiction
This spread, backstage at AW09 ‘The Horn of Plenty’ Left, photographed by Anne Deniau
This page, SS10 ‘Plato’s Atlantis’, photographed by Anne Deniau
Burton has admirably inherited “McQueen the his name- a near impossible taskthe brand will never again brand will never McQueen embody the insurmountable genius wicked beauty it once did. The again embody the and anniversary of McQueen’s death, approaches its eleventh year, insurmountable which reminds all of one thing: not only the fashion industry, but the world lost a It would be impossible to imagine genius and wicked great prophet. exactly what a great designer like Lee Alexander McQueen would have beauty it once did. made of today’s turbulent world, but it could only ever have been unique ” and a little bit bonkers. Although would have been.” Much of Burton’s technicality and perfectionism echoes McQueen’s, but she has always insisted that she will never encroach on his rawness and authenticity, his theatricality and storytelling, which could never be replicated anyway.
This spread, backstage at ‘The Horn of Plenty’ AW09, Right, in the studio preparing ‘Horn of Plenty’, 2009, photographed by Nick Waplington Overleaf, backstage at AW09 ‘Horn of Plenty’, photographed by Anne Deniau