The one advantage of 2017’s incredibly rainy British summer is that it was good for the gardens—and for Sarah Burton’s Alexander McQueen collection. When she and her band of textile specialists took a day trip out of London to visit Great Dixter house in East Sussex, its flower borders were in spectacular bloom. The photographs of what they saw filled walls in the studio and set Burton off. “It was about Britishness, being in the garden, and the healing power of nature,” she said.
Transplanted to Paris, the McQueen narrative had grown. There were pergolas with canopies draped with embroidered flowers and a brick runway. The models, with their drenched-in-a-downpour hair, advanced along the garden path in studded flat boots, a crowd inspired both by the flowerbeds and the history of an English country house. Famously, British aristocrats will wear their country clothes till they fall apart and store away ball gowns, wedding dresses, bed linens, and other textiles in trunks for generations. The “House Style” exhibition at Chatsworth House had also fertilized this collection.
The beautiful results began with deconstructed, falling-apart raincoats over pink chiffon ruffled dresses. Quilts, eiderdowns, and wallpaper prints inspired patchwork coats. Gardener’s waxed-cotton Barbours became khaki dresses and outdoor pants. Tailoring picked up English gentleman’s black-and-white checks and military tattersall. Decaying wedding dresses were brought down from notional attics and their remains worn over black trousers.
It was all in the imaginative seam Burton has sewn since she succeeded the house founder. She’s a nature lover at heart whose team is capable of cultivating the most incredible handcrafted textiles. This season, some of the newest harked back to the ’50s in glassy synthetic, organza dance dresses in poppy and peony hues. It ended with eveningwear that will undoubtedly costume weddings held in grand country estates all over the world next summer.
