V47
Long Live McQueen
Ph: Richard Burbridge
Styling: Jay Massacret
Models: Oxana Pautova, Rachel Alexander, Cecilia Mendez, Georgia Frost, Margaret Peppey
“It was all about decay,” Alexander McQueen says of his spring 2007 collection. “I used flowers because they die. My mood was darkly romantic at the time.”
“It started with the Salem witch trials—a personal and passionate subject for me as I discovered that some of my ancestors were hanged as witches. I traced the roots of witchcraft back to Paganism and ancient Egypt where people worshipped the sun and moon.”
—Alexander McQueen on his Fall 2007 collection
From this spring side of the bad-boy British designer to his fall collection that plunged into pagan gore, who else has managed to keep outrage and awe in fashion for so long?
In contrast to some of his more theatrical spectacles—most notably a Depression-era dance-off, and a show back in ’99 in which a robot sprayed red paint across Shalom Harlow’s white dress—Alexander McQueen’s Spring 2007 presentation might have appeared a tame affair. Shown in the round at the Cirque d’Hiver with the accompaniment of a chamber orchestra, it certainly made a play at civilized. But the real spectacle was the clothes—inspired by Goya, the Marchesa Casati, and Kubrick’s celebrated Edwardian period piece,
Barry Lyndon. This was the belle époque,
replete with all its poetry and dusty-pink romance, exaggerated to surreal proportions. There were corseted jackets that bloomed quite literally around the collar, boned cocktail dresses with swollen hourglass silhouettes, lace-covered gowns that cocooned the body in an amorphous rosebud, and sharply tailored suit jackets with added material to shroud the head. It was a magical, mystical collection, part dream, part reality. People cooed.
For many of those who made the journey, on a rainy Friday night last March, to a sports arena on the outskirts of Paris, McQueen’s Fall 2007 presentation proved a hard pill to swallow. The pentagram, traced in sand on the floor, was partially to blame. As was the film, a grisly montage of blood and fire and faces decaying, that flickered from above. And then there were the clothes: highly structured, hardened molds in new, alien shapes that played with the idea of paganism and its roots in ancient Egypt. They were inspired by, and dedicated to, an ancestor of McQueen’s who, his mother recently discovered, had been hanged during the 17th-century Salem witch trials. Some critics thought the clothes looked uncomfortable; others dared to call them misogynistic. But for a designer who’s never been afraid to explore territory outside the comfort zone, such talk proved that McQueen, a self-proclaimed “bad egg” and “pink sheep” of fashion, hasn’t lost any of his bite. After all, this is the same man who, as a young apprentice at Gieves and Hawkes, scrawled “McQueen was here” on the lining of Prince Charles’ suits; the same man who incorporated crushed beetles and human hair in his early collections, presented a show in an insane asylum, and sent out a double-amputee model. And for it all, he’s received both the CFDA’s International Designer of the Year award and four British Designer of the Year awards, the latter bequeathed by (oh, the sweet irony) Prince Charles himself. McQueen wouldn’t be fashion’s designated enfant terrible if he didn’t create grand theatrics, incite a scale of emotions, celebrate the slightly sinister, and tailor it to perfection. “Give me the time,” he was reported saying after the sale of his company to Gucci Group in December of 2000, “and I’ll give you revolutionary.” He is anything but incorrect.
Karin Nelson
vmagazine.com
I admit Lara is one of my favourite models, but like any model I can easily get fed up of seeing her too much. Best example in history was Kate Moss fall 2006 
Pretty face but nothing special there. Just another muse for bored photographers and designers....
I'll be tired of Lara if she goes on at this speed. It's too much what she does, and I would like to see her around in a year still. And Suvi :Rofl: She's like 10 times more bland or boring than Catherine, sorry. I'd like to see more Polina or Eugenia. Or Inguna. 
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