Some of this lovely Alexander McQueen womenswear collection you might have already seen—on men. That’s because it was launched in sync with the spring 2022 menswear collection from the house, with which it shared many pieces and strands of common thought. The wonderful use of William Blake illustrations, the sinuously zipped tailoring, and the sporty racer-back embroidered dress were just a few of these beyond-gender overlaps.
The rhythm of Sarah Burton’s work here also played against the visual cantos of another collection, spring 2022, which was presented after this collection but made public before it. These included the nipped waist; full-skirted, recontextualized, ’50s-silhouette dresses—some with bombastically ruffled shoulders; and the rigorously constructed and precisely powerful pieces in black leather. More broadly, in the photographing of both there was evident deliberation in matching look and wearer in order to amplify the individuality of personality.
When you zoom out even further, that show in the sky and this Blakean ode were both utterly consistent yet fresh reinventions of the in-house canon of creativity that is the legacy of Alexander McQueen himself and the métier of Burton, his closest creative confidante and ongoing posthumous propagator. Blake once said, “My business is to create.” Business is thriving, chez Alexander McQueen.
