Months after its stormy Spring/Summer 2022 show, Alexander McQueen has released a powerful short film celebrating the collection – and the London skyline that inspired it
For the Alexander McQueen Spring/Summer 2022 show, creative director Sarah Burton looked to storm chasers – a niche community of people who seek out severe weather, just for the thrill of it. “Storm chasing is not only about the beauty of the views but also a sense of mystery and excitement – about embracing the fact that we can’t ever be sure of what might happen next,” Burton said at the time. “To give up control and be directly in touch with the unpredictable is to be part of nature, to see and feel it at its most intense – to be at one with a world that is bigger and more powerful than we are.”
On the roof of the Tobacco Docks in east London last October, models stamped through a transparent dome in dresses evocative of Britain’s blustery, miserable weather. The show was the brand’s first in the city for five years, and perhaps aptly – this being London after all – the skies were grey.
Directed by Sophie Muller, Storm Chasing picks up where the collection left off, with the S/S22 McQueen looks billowing in the wind amidst seagull cries and claps of thunder. Shot against the London skyline, the film is almost patriotic in its embrace of British culture; St Paul’s Cathedral, the Shard and the jagged outline of the Barbican towers can all be made out in the background, while the use of Massive Attack’s track Safe from Harm evokes a bygone era of pioneering British 1990s trip-hop. “I look out over London from our studio where the views are incredible and represent our home throughout history: from St Paul’s Cathedral to the London Eye,” says Burton. “The sky against which those familiar monuments appear may be calm and restorative at times and menacing at others.”