Take either the M1 or the A1 freeway out of London and you’ll soon see signs that read almost like a warning: “The North.” England’s historical and cultural north/south divide is as entrenched as that of Westeros. For this collection Macclesfield-raised Sarah Burton (this makes her a northerner) transported the McQueen aesthetic away from soft, southern London and up toward the rugged heartlands of her upbringing.
As in the most recent womenswear collection, there was a heavy leaning on the sartorial that showcased the virtuosity of the Yorkshire textile mills with which McQueen partnered. The fiercest suits featured tooth both hound and puppy, blended and mashed into competing sections of check and pattern. When worn under oversize overcoats in more blown-up houndstooth, these looks were as intense on the eye as a Bridget Riley canvas.
More suits came in bold, cock-of-the-walk checks with startling stripes of blue and pink: Mighty fine Fancy Dan fare when teamed with strong-collared silk shirting in check-complementing colors. The glinting crystal necklaces and earrings and crystal-stringed jackets were presented as homages to the glamour of Blackpool’s ballrooms, and pink, burgundy, or blue silk jacquard suits featured metallic rose emblems, symbols so significant to the history of north/south relations that a war was named after them. A beautifully finished gabardine trench came lined in a torn-collage rose print that featured throughout the collection, either as print or embroidery.
Burton also mined earthier attire than suiting. On a foundation of exaggerated-soled monkey boots she recast the donkey jacket in brushed wool and shrunk the parka to much punkier proportions than usual. There were boilersuits in dahlia pink silk and black leather; strapped officer great coats, vaguely sinister, in black leather; and a funnily hardcore-mumsy mix of housecoats in painted check over leathers: when Coronation Street met Carnaby Street.
If you looked hard at those leather great coats you could make out the faintest patterned relief: On jacquard suits, trousers, and jackets was a pretty enlarged Sheffield lace pattern whose boldness here functioned as the antithesis of the net curtains that inspired it. For rather than screens to twitch and hide behind as you peered out at the neighbors, here the motif made for clothes in which to compel your neighbors to pay admiring attention. This McQueen love letter to the north was way too good not to wear down south.
