Window McQueen-ing

The store’s London windows feature highlights from McQueen’s incandescent career. There’s a dress from the S/S ’99 show, in which robot arms spray-painted model Shalom Harlow, and items from the A/W ’08 collection, which was inspired by a 600-year-old elm tree in the designer’s garden.

Some of the pieces on display were slated for inclusion in the Metropolitan retrospective, but British customs regulations worked in London’s favour.

‘[W]e have also been able to feature some stunning, and truly inspiring, archive pieces that were not able to be sent over to the New York exhibition,’ Janet Wardley, head of visual merchandising, said. ‘I cannot wait to see our customers’ reactions when they see these pieces of art on display.’

Although the exhibition will not transfer to a UK museum, Sarah Burton’s authorship of the Royal Wedding gown has reconfirmed McQueen as a resolutely British fashion house.

‘I am so utterly thrilled for both Sarah and the entire Alexander McQueen house for their part in the royal wedding, and what will now be a part of patriotic history,’ HN Buying Director Averyl Oates said. ‘Alexander McQueen was a creative genius, visionary and inspiration to the fashion world.... These windows provide us with an opportunity to salute both the man himself, and his spectacular body of work.’

In (slightly) related news, another way to salute both the man and his spectacular body of work comes to us courtesy of The Met Store: a miniat