I kept seeing Elizabeth Taylor wearing Sarah Burton’s Alexander McQueen Resort 2021 collection as if it burst in full bloom from the head of famed, old-Hollywood costume designer Elizabeth Head. I’m not alone in seeing that visual connection — 50’s and early 60’s women of means, who played boogie-woogie on the piano, read Tennessee Williams, and drank too many martinis. But never before sundown.

A trompe l’oeil print of 1950s photographic roses defines the mood of cocktail elegance — but never prim and proper. These women were inclined to push the envelope — even when they had no idea where they were going.

“This collection was designed during lockdown.” the notes accompanying the Alexander McQueen Resort Lookbook began. “It is made predominantly out of stock fabric: overprinted, overdyed—renewed.”

The Alexander McQueen Resort 2021 collection was photographed by Chloé Le Drezen on a beach along southern England’s Jurassic Coast. Models Anok Yai, Lara Mullen and Sora Choi lead the cast also filmed by Masha Vasyukova.

The World Heritage Site an area long renowned as a fruitful source of fossils. Smithsonian Magazine explains the geography:

Around 200 million years ago, this shoreline was entirely submerged by a tropical sea. The area was then around the latitude of Morocco, and its warm water supported a rich marine ecosystem filled with everything from ammonites (marine mollusks with a protective coiled shell) to ferocious 10-meter-long reptiles. Over time, the sea receded and the tectonic plate on which England sits drifted northward, but the sedimentary rocks and clay that formed the ancient seabed remained intact.

That location seemed relevant to the clothes themselves. Many in fashion-world felt this was a new McQueen collection, one where Burton honored and preserved the DNA of the house while evolving into the future.