Heritage, nature, artistry, and narrow-waisted suiting: Alexander McQueen’s menswear this season was as rich in reference as it was austere in silhouette. Sarah Burton and her team roamed north from the Henry Moore studio in Hertfordshire, England, to the thistle-strewn Highlands of Scotland on a trip that began with a house reference: the skull.
Artist-style overalls and an oversized hand-tufted intarsia sweater were both patterned with fearsome reproductions of the deathly McQueen motif. The artist link led to Moore, with whose foundation Burton worked faithfully to reproduce sweeping illuminated brushstrokes from Three-Quarter Figure (1928), re-engineered on wool suits and a topcoat, as well as a tufted sweater.
The McQueen journey north was likely via motorcycle: the biker jackets and asymmetric shearlings (one red example was fashioned from five different leathers) played strongly at the presentation in Milan this morning. Once dismounted and cèilidh-ready there was trompe l’oeil bicolor but also rainbow-flecked Donegal suiting, other suits in a silver-versus-gold degrade, thistle-illustrated shirting, and some spectacular suiting inset with hand-embroidered abstract metallic swirls. For the morning after there was a satisfyingly punky, Renton-esque (Trainspotting, people) oversized Scottish flag sweater, with rakers added to make it argyle. As ever, the product at McQueen was irreproachable and true to its own spirit—which made it feel a pity that menswear (surely not a category to be marginalized) lacks the storytelling focus afforded its fiercely beautiful runway-shown sister.
