See All The Looks From Alexander McQueen Autumn/Winter 2022
"As a community we are infinitely more able to restore, reinvent, rejuvenate – heal."
26 years after its NYC debut, Alexander McQueen was back in the city to show its fall 2022 collection.
The late designer Lee Alexander McQueen first presented Dante in 1996 in the Lower East Side, and returned in 1999 for Eye—Sarah Burton was in the Big Apple with him on both occasions. "It is part of our community, a place that has always welcomed us, and this season I want to honour that," said Burton in her show notes.
And that, she did. Burton was inspired by the idea of community, specifically by mycelium, which "has the most profound, interconnecting power, relaying messages through a magical underground structure, allowing trees to reach out to each other when either they or their young need help or are sick."
The collection paid tribute to the humble mushroom: dresses and knits featured psychedelic mushroom prints, their mycelia represented as long silk fringes; puffed dresses cinched in the waist and decorated with crystal embellished panels; sharply tailored pantsuits drenched in similarly vivid colours or spray-painted—reminiscent of the label's archival collection, No. 13, where spray-painting robots gunned Shalom Harlow and her strapless white dress on the runway.