Alexander McQueen’s tantalizingly “trashy” production for Paris Fashion Week seemed to roar, leaving the audience with eyes wide and mouths aflutter. The show — which featured models that resembled creepy crossbreeds between a blow-up doll, Pinhead from Hellraiser, and Blythe (incidentally the postergirl for McQueen’s line with Target, but more on that later) sauntering among black heaps of junky old props from the designer’s past shows — sent uneasy waves through the crowd.

With the economy and the environment simultaneously in ruins, the throwaway pattern of high fashion is under serious scrutiny. Oscar Wilde once said, “A fashion is merely a form of ugliness so unbearable that we are compelled to alter it every six months.” McQueen’s show certainly picked up on that. Expression-less models faded behind hideously large red lips as they paraded around in replicas of famous fashion looks as “The Beautiful People” by Marilyn Manson played in the background. It certainly made one wonder what kind of grotesque interior lay under all of that ravishing finery.

And ravishing it was. Despite all of his allusions to fashion as filth, there was no lack of breathtaking loveliness and straight-up sartorial skill in McQueen’s collection. As in past collections, the clothes themselves felt lurid and almost sinister. A showstopping crimson and ebony gown splashed with M.C. Escher’s bird print looked a lot like something that Jennifer Lopez wore in the psychological thriller The Cell. A rich, tangled tweed skirt suit that could have been right from the pages of a 1950s Vogue, and a bulbous orange and black harlequin cloud made perfect sense, strangely, alongside a black and white fur coat covered in too-huge houndstooth print and a stunning head-to-calf feathered ivory body covering.

This entry was posted on Monday, March 23rd, 2009 at 10:31 am and is filed under Fashion Design. Tags: Alexander McQueen, and Blythe, blow-up doll, Dior’s New Look and Givenchy’s little black dress, Jennifer Lopez, Marilyn Manson, McQueen’s show, Oscar, Oscar Wilde, Paris Fashion Week, Paris Fashion Week Alexander McQueen, Pinhead from Hellraiser, The Beautiful People, The Cell. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.