Division and Britain go hand in hand, especially now. Four countries bolted together (for the moment) as one, near equally inhabited by Remainers and Leavers, it’s a nation united by disunity. For this Pre-Fall collection Sarah Burton and her team looked to England’s north—eternally polarized against England’s south—to build a collection of clothes that strikingly combined a collage of contrasting regional elements into an innovative and harmonious whole.
Burton, a Maxonian, counts as a bona fide northerner and the north-sourced ingredients she rallied here were broader than the outstanding rose-strewn, tailoring-focused (and furthering) Fall collection. Here, the cut crystals threaded upon a sleeveless house-shouldered tailored jacket and strung along the surface of layered lace and tulle dresses were nods to the grandiose chandeliers of Blackpool’s great gilded ballrooms. The occasional crystal on multi-buttoned cardigan or spike-toed loafers were imagined as earrings lost in a particularly passionate cha-cha-cha.
That jacket and almost every other in the collection were cut with a low skirt, a semi-peaked lapel, and a single button, then placed above triple-pleated peg-leg pants to muster a silhouette meant as tribute to the Neo-Edwardian style of northern 1950s teddy girls. Some of the suits came in a silk-printed rip-edged photo collage of rose images, both as tribute to those evergreen floral symbols of the north—Lancashire v. York—and the album art of Factory Records. The rose motif rambled through the collection, reappearing as embroideries on jackets or metallic relief on powdery pink, nylon-shot silk jacquard suits and a deconstructed bodice top with side skirt. A washed silk duchesse dress in the collage print featured a Victorian bustle back (as a nod to the Brontës) with a tulle-pumped, exploded couture-style sleeve (back to the ballroom), while a long white waffle cotton shirtdress referenced the made-in-Manchester suffragette movement.
At the end of the rail, evening suits featured painstakingly assembled sequin portraits of cormorants, one of the symbols of Liverpool. This McQueen collection was a soulfully northern exercise in comparison, collision, and ultimate integration that will find an audience way beyond the boundaries of its reference.
