Details from an ethereal seascape informed the construction and aesthetic of Sarah Burton’s S/S12 collection for Alexander McQueen. Models swept, rolled and shimmered down the catwalk, with intricate ruffles and layers of tulle calling to...
Details from an ethereal seascape informed the construction and aesthetic of Sarah Burton’s S/S12 collection for Alexander McQueen. Models swept, rolled and shimmered down the catwalk, with intricate ruffles and layers of tulle calling to mind the gentle motion of seaweed under water, while pearl studded lace skullcaps were at once unearthly and coral-esque. Throughout, the natural world was evident yet at once juxtaposed with the precise, man-made order of the clothes’ design.
It was the desire to explore this relationship between natural and man-made that motivated artist and director Catherine Sullivan while she searched for locations to shoot She Builds Domes In Air, AnOther’s exclusive film starring Kristen McMenamy in the McQueen collection. “This tension inspired me to look for a meticulously cultivated wilderness, a natural environment that was emphatically structured,” she said, a brief that was fulfilled by the Temperate House in Kew Gardens, the largest surviving Victorian glasshouse in the world.
Commissioned in 1859, the Temperate House was conceived as a home for the vast numbers of plants that voracious amateur collectors were bringing back from their journeys abroad. Designed by architect Decimus Burton, it is a masterpiece of high Victorian craftsmanship; glass panes cut with a latticework of wrought iron bars, balanced atop vast pillars adorned with ornate finials, pediments, swags of exotic fruit and stone statues. Inside, the plants lie in the same serried rows first imposed by the founders, although, with the inevitability of time, strict Victorian order has given way to a gentle disarray, with thick green fronds touching the ceiling and obscuring the windows. For Sullivan’s shoot, which took place on an icy December evening, the ordinarily amiable landscape was transformed into a sinister wilderness stalked by a multiplicity of exquisitely attired McMenamys, the grainy 16mm film picking out the near biological textures of the extraordinary designs.
Text by Tish Wrigley
The Temperate House at Kew Gardens is open daily.
