McQueen's Atlantis

By Katie Wright

McQueen's Atlantis

If Chanel was the gold standard in Paris, ALEXANDER MCQUEEN took the silver medal. Another triumph of artistic vision and technical excellence, my only criticism would be the issue of wearability. For starters, those huge heels that looked like the models’ feet had been cast in blocks of cement then chiselled someway towards a ballet slipper slowed them to a stuttering glacial pace. This was the first indicator that everything was going to be a bit primeval this season, and for every dress that followed you could almost name the counterpart creature - snake, shark, jelly fish, dinosaur, butterfly… All were compressed into computerised Rorschach-esque prints on dresses that jutted and bulged like armour, but in fabric that moved more delicately than photos suggest.

(You can watch the whole show on McQueen’s website here - http://www.alexandermcqueen.com/int/en/corporate/archive2010_ss_womensp.aspx)

Mossy greens and browns made way for deep blue, black and watery silver, mirrored by the complicated colour-changing stage, as the reason for the show’s title, ‘Plato’s Atlantis,’ became even more obvious. Visually beautiful, fashion purists may not be pleased to hear that the final walk through was also used as a platform to debut Lady Gaga’s new single. Looks like we’re going to have to get used to this kind of increasingly-popular catwalk-commerce hybrid, but when the clothes are this good, it hardly matters.