Alexander McQueen (British, 1969–2010)
Dress
Plato’s Atlantis, spring/summer 2010
Gray wool and silk/synthetic knit printed in jellyfish pattern
Courtesy of Alexander McQueen
Photograph © Sølve Sundsbø / Art + Commerce

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Andrew Bolton: As you can see here, McQueen designed many permutations of the frock coat. He made this one for the 2010 collection, Plato’s Atlantis. Here we have Sarah Burton—who was McQueen’s head designer for fourteen years—talk about the collection.

Sarah Burton: He was interested in this concept of hybrid. With those tailored pieces, specifically; they had tailored arms, but the body was jersey. So there’s this weird sort of hybrid and juxtapositioning of different fabrics and how would they react together.

So he took these jersey shifts, put them on the mannequin, and then cut into all of these tailored pieces and morphed the two together. When you watched him cut on the stand, it gave you goose bumps because he had a sort of bravery. He was never afraid of anything. It was never, “Oh, this is not going to work.” He was so confident and so clear about the way that he was doing things, and that was, I think . . . part of his genius is his knowledge of every single level of making clothes.

I remember on the last collection he did, he actually—on a piece of felt with a piece of chalk—chalked out a frock coat by eye, cut it out, and pinned it on a dummy and it was a perfect fit. That’s how familiar he was with that piece of clothing.

“I like to think of myself as a plastic surgeon with a knife.”

Wynn, Winter 2007/08

“With me, metamorphosis is a bit like plastic surgery, but less drastic. I try to have the same effect with my clothes. But ultimately I do this to transform mentalities more than the body. I try and modify fashion like a scientist by offering what is relevant to today and what will continue to be so tomorrow.”

Numéro, December 2007

Alexander McQueen (British, 1969–2010)
Dress
Plato’s Atlantis, spring/summer 2010
Silk jacquard in a snake pattern embroidered with yellow enamel paillettes in a honeycomb pattern
Courtesy of Alexander McQueen
Photograph © Sølve Sundsbø / Art + Commerce

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Andrew Bolton: The exhibition ends with the collection Plato’s Atlantis, which was McQueen’s last collection while he was alive.

Sarah Burton: It was the idea of sort of the reversal of evolution, how life would evolve back into the water if the ice caps melted and we were being reclaimed by nature. We had all these engineered prints that he’d developed, sort of looking at the morphing of species, natural camouflages, and aerial views of the land.

We had research on the boards, and what he told us to do is he said, “I don’t want to look at any research. Turn all the boards around.” So he literally just worked from the fabric.

So what he would do is he would have an engineered print, and with that print he would place it on the form, and he would pin and construct these pieces that looked like they’d morphed out of the body themselves.

And only by taking the fabric and seeing how the fabric moved, you could come up with something new—by creating it on a body because clothes are to be worn; they’re not two-dimensional things. They are something that has to sit and mold onto a human being.

Andrew Bolton: The collection was streamed live over the Internet in an attempt to make fashion into an interactive dialogue with the audience. I think what’s particularly interesting is for the Romantics, nature was the primary vehicle for the Sublime, and for McQueen, technology was also a channel for the Sublime, particularly the extreme space/time compressions produced by the Internet.

Alexander McQueen (British, 1969–2010)
“Jellyfish” Ensemble
Plato’s Atlantis, spring/summer 2010
Dress, leggings, and “Armadillo” boots embroidered with iridescent enamel paillettes
Courtesy of Alexander McQueen
Photograph © Sølve Sundsbø / Art + Commerce

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Sarah Burton: I think with Plato’s Atlantis, it was real perfection the way he executed every single piece. But knowing Lee, he would have probably gone somewhere completely different after Angels and Demons. He would always surprise you, and that was the joy of working with him, is he would always take it somewhere that was unexpected.

Every time he would take up a different theme or a different angle or a different technique and he would always push it forward, like, relentlessly pushing forward. And you could never really predict what he was going to do because he was so much his own person. His vision was so pure.

And he was really funny, and he was really good fun to work for. And, you know, he was incredibly loyal and incredibly inspiring.

Andrew Bolton: McQueen once remarked, “I’m overly romantic,” but it was precisely his romantic yearnings that propelled his creativity and advanced fashion in directions previously considered unimaginable.

“[This collection predicted a future in which] the ice cap would melt . . . the waters would rise and . . . life on earth would have to evolve in order to live beneath the sea once more or perish. Humanity [would] go back to the place from whence it came.”

Plato’s Atlantis (spring/summer 2010) program notes

“There is no way back for me now. I am going to take you on journeys you’ve never dreamed were possible.”

WWD, February 12, 2010