Look up, says Sarah Burton. See the sky. For her first real-life Alexander McQueen show since the pandemic crashed down on humanity, she gathered people to a carpark rooftop in the East End of London, for an encounter with the aerial powers of nature: “a show in the sky.”
It was a metaphor inspired by the spectacular rolling skies that she and the McQueen team see from the studio every day, and yet equally grounded in her new sense of dealing with the reality of the here-and-now. “There’s that sense that the sky is ever-changing—this constant change that’s uncontrollable. Some days it can be kind of very calm, a very beautiful dappled sky. And then this kind of ferocious sky,” she observed. “And I’ve been thinking about what we've all been through: this constant feeling that you don’t know what the next day is going to be. And how you have to just face it with bravery. The fact is, we’re not in control of the situation. Nature is more powerful than us. Sun, rain, storm—whatever comes, you have to just keep going.”
The British weather played its part as if on cue. The transparent cloud-like Smiljan Radic-designed bubble of the McQueen tent was pierced with brilliant sunshine at the beginning of the show—the perfect backdrop for dresses printed with photographic images of sunrises and dazzling blue skies and clouds which the McQueen team had captured from the studio balcony.
The weather theme leant form to snowy-white cumulus sleeves ruched into a taffeta parka-dress and a blouse. A voluminous wind-blown trench coat was followed by a ray-of-sunshine wisp of a dress in off-the-shoulder yellow tulle. Sparkling crystal “raindrop” embroidery splashed brilliantly on the shoulders of a tweed jacket; the skirt of a tank dress swished with blue rivulets of fringed pailletes. And just as “night” fell on three glamorous black finale looks, the London skies turned a threatening leaden gray.
But the last thing Burton wanted to convey was purely head-in-the-clouds escapism. It would have been too easy to carry through a show that was only a prettily themed series of this-looks-like-that under the business-as-usual untruth that nothing has been changed by the experience of working through the pandemic. “I didn’t want to get on that train,” she said.