McQueen Makes Clothes to Protect and Empower

After the past few years of isolation, we are all trying to find ways to connect again. This was top of mind for Sarah Burton at Alexander McQueen as she designed the spring 2023 ready-to-wear collection.

“It’s about seeing things again, seeing each other, seeing humanity, caring about each other, not just walking around with heads down,” she said.

It started with the venue, a transparent cloud-like bubble designed by Chilean architect Smiljan Radić, which had been plunked down in a courtyard in the Old Royal Navy College in Greenwich just outside London.

This was the bubble’s second appearance; it was first unveiled on the top of a parking lot in East London for McQueen’s spring 2022 show, the first in London in 20 years. Sunlight streamed in through the "membrane" as if following Burton’s remit: all the better to see—the clothes and each other. Fitting, too, as the eye was a theme throughout the collection. The eye, Burton said, "is a symbol of that humanity, a register of emotion, an expression of uniqueness."

Burton has shown time and time again that she can do achingly romantic knits and full-skirted gowns with nipped, corseted waists and beautiful embroidery; this collection was not that. It was modern, sexy, severe even. After years of a pandemic, political and social upheaval, and a worsening climate crisis, Burton was thinking about armor. Blade Runner, that perennial fashion mood-board favorite, was an influence.

Alexander McQueen Spring 2023 RTW

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Backstage following the show, Burton said there was a question she sought to address: “How do you dress a woman to empower them in the times that we live?”

To that end, there were sculpted leather bodices and belts over sharp tailoring in bold primary colors. Several leather asymmetrical skirts looked like a motorcycle jacket tied around the waist.

Burton said she wanted to "dissect" tailoring, showing blazers that had been slashed through or lopped off and reworked into a corset top. There were skintight catsuits, some with cutouts or mesh panels, one all in denim, and one memorably covered in sequins embroidered in the shape of a giant eye and modeled by the one and only Naomi Campbell.

Armor makes you feel strong; it's not something that necessarily covers you up. The McQueen woman has always embodied extremes and the anarchic spirit of its founder. One of the most notable motifs in the collection was the return of the bumster, the butt-crack bearing low-rise waist that Alexander McQueen created in the ‘90s.

That waistline set the course for a decade of low-rise denim, and it’s a trend the Y2K-obsessed TikTok generation seems eager to revive since they missed it the first time. Burton’s version is slightly higher (no cracks were on display) but good on her for reminding the next generation where it all started.