Eye | Spring 2015 Designer Brands | Sarah Burton's Proverbial Goddess Women

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2015 is a milestone year for the Alexander McQueen brand. February marks the fifth anniversary of Lee McQueen’s suicide, while the sold-out ‘Savage Beauty’ retrospective will open at London’s V&A museum in March 2015.

Alexander McQueen Creative Director Sarah Burton, McQueen’s assistant prior to his death, turns east to Japan this season, with the always dark undercurrent of he/she power plays operating in both designs and theatrics. Not surprisingly, Burton’s Queen Bee women are on top of their game — a psychological perspective not necessarily shared by the more female-ambivalent Lee McQueen.

Alexander McQueen’s Spring 2015 ad campaign features model Karolin Wolter lensed by David Sims.

 

Previously on AOC

Sarah Burton Takes The Helm of Alexander McQueen

Sarah Burton’s Spring 2012 Goddess Collection Unleashes McQueen’s Unbearable Beauty

Sarah Burton’s interpretation of the Alexander McQueen aesthetic is so subtle, that perhaps only a Smart Sensuality woman sees the trend. Both Karl Lagerfeld for Chanel and Sarah Burton’s collection for McQueen paid homage to women of the sea in Paris yesterday. (Chanel coming shortly).

Both collections are astoundingly beautiful, but Burton’s is more psychological. Style.com writer Tim Blankscaught the difference, too. ‘Lagerfeld’s models were nymphs; Sarah Burton’s were goddesses,’ writes Blanks.

Bingo — a man after my own heart and mind. Who said men can’t dig deeply into womanly concepts like the difference between nymphs and goddesses!

The answer is power. Not only are the Alexander McQueen women more powerful — goddesses rather than nymphs — they are shedding their Lee McQueen ambivalence about female power and its impact on the lives of men. Still bound with fetish details and an inherent female eroticism, the Sarah Burton women are lighter, even romantic at moments and more human than animal. McQueen’s women hovered more obviously between both worlds — torn creatures in the mind of the man who invented them.

Very psychological, I know. What’s crystal clear to me is challenging to explain, but I will attempt do so in a long piece soon … the post that has drifted in my mind for months since McQueen’s death and his show at the Met.

McQueen’s Ambivalence Revealed?

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