Often when a new creative director of a brand is inducted, it becomes so-and-so for [insert brand name], under the guise of said brand. But when Sarah Burton took over as Creative Director, Alexander McQueen remained Alexander McQueen.
From his collections alone, you felt the depth of his emotions. Every collection, rushed or well-thought out, dumped some heavy sentiment on viewers. There was no way you couldn’t see a McQueen and not sense some scale of feeling for what you’ve just experienced.
You always remember your first time seeing their designs. You will always remember the first piece added to your collection. Alexander McQueen was a designer, a human being, that gave us a view of his vulnerabilities for our selfish mass consumption. Sarah Burton continued that legacy, translating her own vulnerabilities into the brand, while reeling back in all the parts of himself scattered in random places.
In my shamanic work, we use a tool called “Power Song” to bring back all parts of you remaining in places due to traumatic situations. From anxiety, to moments of violation, to board meetings where your talent was belittled for dollar signs. A Power Song returns you home. It returns you to you.
Sarah Burton was Alexander McQueen’s Power Song. Returning the last straggling parts of McQueen, and departing to continue the next leg of her journey.
What a blessing to have lived during a time where we encountered and lost a fashion icon, while living through another icon as she simultaneously continued the legacy of the former.
Truly, what a time to exist.
As her final walk around the stage as Creative Director, Sarah pulls her inspirations for this collection from the “female anatomy”, creating pieces not only reminiscent of genitalia, but the varying structures and systems within the body forming a person’s anatomical makeup. The organs pulsating through the open-heart corsets. The spine hand crocheted into an ivory jumper. The muscles depicted through shredded wool, silk, and velvet jacquard. The skeletal system sculpting the hips to accommodate a woman’s body, versus a woman adjusting her body for clothes. Even the breastplate necklace models the chest cavity, like a protector of the heart; one of the most vital organs in the human body.
There’s an innate strength that comes through when reminded of what’s underneath it all, brushed in femininity when seen through metallics, reds, pinks, and blacks. It’s knowing there is no existence or continuation of the human race without the female anatomy, and there is no value when you compromise who you are.
Whether you see fashion as an art form, or a hyper-sensationalized trend, Sarah Burton fulfilled her promise. Giving her designer youth to a brand, not even her own. Sarah came, she saw, and she conquered. Now it’s her time be center stage in whatever capacity calling her forward.
P.S. I have a feeling, if there is any collection to cop a piece from, it’s this one.