Wasp waists and bumble bees: the world buzzes in awe around McQueen

 
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3 October 2012

For the British contingent on the penultimate evening of Paris Fashion Week, the Alexander McQueen show is a time for celebration. Not least because it signals the final hurdle, but because it generates an overriding sense of gratitude among buyers and critics who delight in McQueen's ability to blow everything else seen so far entirely out of the water.

Where concise, exquisitely executed catwalk collections are concerned, Sarah Burton's for Alexander McQueen are in a class all of their own. Her skill as a designer is to take an abstract series of influences and inspirations and to mould them into something that feels neither obvious nor contrived.

While her contemporaries may reference an era, Burton's approach is to look at one or two aspects in supreme detail. In short, she sees beauty in the simplest of things - and then has the confidence to design a collection around them.

Buzzing bumble bees that evoked memories of the late Lee McQueen's iconic butterfly collection were among Burton's starting points for this offering. Some, silver in form, featured on the thick leather belts, others found homes on cuffs. Continuing this theme, a honeycomb motif was key and appeared on large circular headdresses as well as on fabric that had been beautifully folded to create the effect. This results of this meant that those watching the show gained flashes of the models' skin as they took the turn on the catwalk. It also lent the collection a sensual, slightly flirtatious feel. Of course, it was never crass.

Burton was inspired by the playful pin-up girl prints of Antonio Vargas in designing this body of work, and that influence showed throughout. A 1920s hourglass silhouette dominated. Wasp waists - pulled in by those bee-detailed belts - lent a sense of drama, while boned skirts with bustles exaggerated the hips.

"It's a study of femininity" said the designer and the idealisation of the female form".

With the fashion world currently sagging under the weight of designers, influences and collections that now saturate the industry, it seems inevitable that we look to craftsmanship as a means to separate the wheat from the chaff. Burton is ahead of the competition here, too.

While the house does not offer a haute couture collection, the organza dresses on show last night served as reminder that its head designer is every inch a couturier. Among the most beautiful on display was a vibrant poppy-red gown which came embellished with ripped-silk appliqué flowers.


The rest of Paris should bow to McQueen.

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