FAULT Reviews – Alexander McQueen SS16

Spring/Summer is always a strange season for a label like McQueen – one that is so rooted in a dark, sumptuous, and often harsh aesthetic, seemingly at odds with visions of light linens and the beach. For SS16, Sarah Burton cast her models into the ocean, drawing upon military uniform and maritime imagery reworked into a vision of captain coats and nautical stripes that spoke to Victoriana (and occasionally Tim Burton.) Models had their hair wet and bedraggled, with faces deathly pale, as if we were watching a procession of fallen sailors, returned from the depths (and perhaps the clutches of a mermaid.) The tailoring was impeccable as ever, with sharp cuts, elongated hemlines and rigid structure. Anchors and compass points were applied without seeming kitsch or retro, worked onto white fabric in a chalky blue as if on Wedgwood China. It was this softness that was most intriguing – with pyjama-inspired suits, sashed at the waist. Dazzle camouflage took a few of the looks in a different direction, seeming almost to speak to a Seventies aesthetic but overall, this collection was charming in its soft Romanticism.