PFW: The woman warrior gets romantic at McQueen show

Yesterday at Alexander McQueen, inside the Jardin du Luxembourg’s Orangerie du Sénat, designer Sarah Burton continued to imbue the British fashion house’s signature dizzying detail and fairy-tale silhouettes with hyper-femininity and provocative poise.

The journey of women and the journey of a woman. Rites of passage, milestones: birth, sisterhood, betrothal, marriage, mourning.

A shredded silk paper taffeta wedding dress, a delicate white embroidered christening gown, dark Ophelia silks, kept in a trousseau, folded with pressed flowers. Heirlooms and keepsakes connect the threads between generations. Hidden treasures, pilgrim souvenirs. Clothing embedded with memories and meaning.

Goddess – from warrior queen to the feminine divine – surveying the rich and vivid landscape before her. Present in nature: the earth, the sea, the sky, the seasons, the sun and the moon.

The rural landscapes of the West Country: chalk downs and ridgeways and ancient sacred sites. Curving hills are marked with carvings of white horses and mythical beasts. Crimson poppies line the walkways to stone circles and hill top castles imbued with a sense of mystery and legend that seeps through the land. The Avalon marshes with their meandering paths and streams edged with tangled wild yellow iris are veiled in mist and evoke the spirit of medieval beauty. A world steeped in pagan ritual and folkloric tradition: the summer solstice and the equinox.

Credits: © Courtesy of Alexander McQueen PR