A model presents a creation by British fashion designer Alexander McQueen for his Ready to Wear Spring Summer 2010 fashion collection, presented in Paris, Tuesday Oct. 6, 2009. (AP Photo/Michel Euler)
(AP)
It's not everyday you can say with certainty "now, that's a fashion show that Charles Darwin would have liked." But British designer Alexander McQueen's spring-summer 2010 ready-to-wear tour de force Tuesday — a sort of "Origin of Species" in a few dozen cocktail dresses — would undoubtedly have garnered a standing ovation from the father of theory of evolution.
From reptiles and aquatic creatures to mammals and on to space creatures and finally nebulae and star systems, McQueen synthesized a response to the big questions of "where do we come from?" and "where are we going?"
It all started with reptiles: Models perched on impossibly high platform booties that were convex through the top of the foot, their hair a serpent's den of cornrows, wore short dresses in snakeskin-light chiffon printed with the scales of copperheads and cobras.
Exquisite pleating created strange and wonderful volume on the shoulders, sleeves and hips — which were worked with an almost courtly savoir faire. Bubbly metallic paneling on some of the dresses glinted like scales.
Then came the winged creatures, owls and insects, whose markings morphed into hallucinatory prints on the feathery chiffon.
Next up, aquatic creatures. The palette shifted from rusty browns and mustardy yellows to a spectrum of blues, purples and grays. Along with the dresses, we got deep-sea gear, with neoprene layered over shimmering microfibers. The booties, embellished with metalwork, glimmered darkly, like an oil spill.
Two gravity-defying peaks, like sleek, aerodynamic antennae, replaced the snaky cornrows. Like super-evolved future humans, the girls grew fleshy ridges on their temples.
Then McQueen went intergalactic, sending out girls who looked like distant nebulae, naked but for a cloud of metallic fabric that swirled around their hips and up their midriffs.
And finally, a star cluster? A dress and matching leggings covered with blinding gold bubbles closed the show.
