The metaphors fell like rain in McQueen s Spring collection for men. Victorian sailors were the protagonists. Imagine them as men adrift, looking for somewhere to belong, seeking a sense of identity in the tattoos with which they covered themselves. All of that could apply to the collection itself.
There was sharply defined elegance in the elongated captain s coats, but a soft, almost androgynous quality in pajamalike jacquards. Mended denim pieces and fraying jackets felt like well-worn relics of a long voyage. Sarah Burton scattered traditional nautical tattoo motifs—compasses, mermaids, anchors—across her spare tailoring, but storybook sea monsters were a stronger graphic element, in a terrycloth bathrobe no less. And there were suits patterned in dazzle ship camouflage, which looked almost incongruously dynamic in this context. That s because dynamism was precisely what the collection lacked. Burton s crew might have been drowned lost boys, suspended out of time, their sole connection to now their footwear. If Fall s earthbound collection packed a real punch, this one felt all at sea.
