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Monday night’s McQ show was the most extraordinarily theatrical event that London Fashion Week has seen in a long while. On an autumnal floor of fallen leaves in the abandoned Old Sorting Office, models were dressed in stern military styles with Scottish accents and 40s New Look silhouettes. Women wore pleated tartan dresses, men wore blue-green kilts, and strict tailoring and dark army khaki abounded. All around, there was the wilderness: girls had their hair pulled up into oversized mushroom buns that matched their mushroom-coloured sleeves; coats were embroidered with mossy shorn knits; funereal black frou-frou skirts were covered in fake flowers; and a fluoro pink and velvety black maple leaf fabric appeared on luxurious dresses.
Towards the end of the show, i-D cover star Kristen McMenamy appeared in a Corpse Bride wedding dress and stood, spotlit, under an unexpected shower of dead leaves… suddenly the walls vanished into thin air and a secret forest of trees appeared at the end of the catwalk! Kristen found a rope in the fallen leaves, followed it into the shady woods and discovered a fairytale cottage… that started throbbing with light and then eventually exploded into a spectacularly illuminated rave finale! A show like no other from the brilliant Sarah Burton.
Text: Dean Kissick
Photography: Mitchell Sams
Click here to see our AW12 Womenswear coverage in full.
