DANTE

Part of me feels like I should apologise (this is, after all, my second McQueen post in the past four days), but I recently got McQueen's Savage Beauty book and feel like, only being 20, I only really got into fashion a few years ago and there are so many incredible collections that this book has made me aware of. As with all the best McQueen collections Dante contains a strong concept, historicism, several references to religious iconography and, of course, beautiful clothes. Based on the conflict between Heaven and Hell, the collection represents the divine contrast by using white lace,intricate florals and lilac silk to juxtapose black leather and bleached denim. Although the two ideas are usually presented as separate looks, one of the highlights of the show saw a delicate lace top which extended to completely cover the models face, half of which was gripped by a skeletal claw, adding the classic McQueen reference to the grotesque. As the show progressed McQueen's representations of the dark side continued to become more and more literal until one model walked the runway covered head-to-toe in a black lace veil which, when strewn over a pair of reindeer antlers, created a striking portrayal of the animalistic nature of "Dante". 

Lace corset used in Dante, shown at the Savage Beauty exhibition

THE HUNGER

After the controversy surrounding ‘Highland Rape’, McQueen decided to move towards a less relatable concept for his following collection, ‘The Hunger’ (which can be seen in full here). The overarching inspiration for this collection was vampires – the inspiration arguably extends to macabre imagery in general but the collection seemed more about vampires than anything else as it focused on the fetishisation of the body, the hunger for flesh. Many argued that McQueen was already rehashing old ideas, and it is true that nudity wasn’t exactly new ground for the designer, but the approach to the nudity was different – it showed the naked body in an almost cannibalistic way, and there was a kind of perversion and aggression to the way that the models flaunted their skin, unlike the vulnerable, threatened girls that we saw in ‘Highland Rape’.