PARIS — It was hard to know what to make of the Alexander McQueen spring 2019 collection when creative director Sarah Burton sent models down a boulder-strewn runway with pigtails plastered to their skulls and their waists trussed up in corsets. One dress in particular, a vaguely Elizabethan gown in gray and white, summed up the disconnect between these clothes and these times.
It was a beautifully constructed gown, which is not a surprise because Burton is an incredibly talented designer and Alexander McQueen is a brand with access to experienced production teams. But a dress for which it would be helpful to have a lady-in-waiting willing and ready to lace one up doesn’t at all seem like what a woman would be looking to wear in the 21st century — unless she was getting done up for her wedding, in which case she may well have entered a state of fashion delirium. Is your fantasy wedding in Middle Earth? Then this is your dress.
Otherwise, this was … well, what was it exactly? A Renaissance festival gala gown? A red-carpet gown for the premiere of a historical drama involving the windswept heath? Where exactly is a woman, any woman, going in this dress?
The runway, of course, is not a place where everything has to be rooted in reality. By definition, it’s a place for dreams and fantasies and experimentation. Designers are encouraged to let their imagination race off to the future or conjure up a heightened reality. Burton, however, seems to let her mind wander to the past, not for inspiration, but as a place to set up residence.