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.
