The Queen Of Hearts

Creative director Sarah Burton emulates the transformative fashion of the late Alexander McQueen with a newfound finesse in balancing exquisite design against the sustainable sourcing of materials.

- Terence Poh

When Sarah Burton took over British luxury fashion house Alexander McQueen in 2010, she was inevitably expected to match her predecessor’s legacy. Since founding his namesake brand in 1992, the late Alexander McQueen designed to challenge the status quo, with a significant focus on confronting historic injustices to women. A feature biography on The Times UK dubbed McQueen the “hooligan” of English fashion for his disruptive and unconventional approach to his designs, but the charge was perhaps more reflective of the society he had experienced, with its comparatively less progressive standards and ideals. His infamous “Highland Rape” collection brought poignant imageries resembling blood-streaked rape victims onto the runway. With dresses torn at the breasts or the groin, McQueen sought fashion as a means to contemplate and thus empower women who have lost themselves to physical and sexual abuse. In other collections, he brandished women with the ferocious maw of the crocodile, the sharply erect antlers of gazelles, and the majesticity of a lion’s mane as armour, readying them for warfare.