For McQueen’s A/W 2008 presentation ‘The Girl
Who Lived in the Tree’ (which can be seen in full here), the designer decided
to use his imagination to create an unusual story behind the decadent
collection. Speaking of the show, he told of how he would look at the
600-year-old elm tree which stood in his garden and dream that there was a girl
dwelling inside it. The story behind this runway presentation would be of that
same girl fleeing the darkness of her tree in order to meet her Prince, get
married and become a Queen. Set to a soundtrack which combined Indian chants
with a classical rendition of ‘Smells like Teen Spirit’, the show was a
wonderful example of the designer’s childlike fascination with all things
magical and resulted in a series of crinolined princess wandering like nomads around the tulle-wrapped tree which stood centre-stage.
Despite collaborating with MAC and launching
various diffusion lines, McQueen’s A/W 2007 collection didn’t sell as well as
was expected. This created a sense of pressure and expectation around his S/S
2008 presentation, entitled ‘La Dame Bleue’ (which can be seen in full here). The show itself was a
collaboration with world-renowned milliner Philip Treacy as the two banded
together to pay tribute to the fashion legend that discovered them both,
Isabella Blow. Their history began when she attended his graduate show and
decided to buy the entire collection - from that moment onwards Blow and
McQueen became close friends. She was always the first to champion his designs
and he in turn saw her as his muse, leading the designer to claim that he felt “a
huge hole in his life” when Blow finally succumbed to a lengthy battle with
depression and committed suicide in 2007.
