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Joan of Arc becomes Alexander McQueen's new muse to inspire spellbinding creations at the close of London Fashion Week.
John Davidson chooses his hot favourites.
THIRTY minutes of utter magic - that is what Alexander McQueen conjured up in his runway spectacle on Wednesday evening. A chainmail and capelet collection - inspired by Joan of Arc - provided a dazzling climax to the week-long calender of London shows. It confirmed Britain's pre-eminence in fashion innovation - and McQueen's own prodigious talent.
McQueen is London's ultimate fashion showman. Who else would have a 30ft-high backdrop spectacularly unzipping as his show began, to provide a tiny gash through which models could appear on the runway? Or a soundtrack which ran from the disturbing sensation of crackling embers to disco greats?
The runway itself was easily 100ft long - spectacularly covered in shimmering coal dust; overhead, dozens of industrial warehouse lights swung from a rig of automated poles.
And just when you thought nothing could quite top the ingenuity of this exercise in stagecraft, McQueen's vision of Joan herself (be- hooded and be-masked in a beaded scarlet dress) was engulfed in a circle of flames .
Talking of vision, medievalism sits well with McQueen's intriguingly sour vision of beauty. Models had tiny blonde braids coiling around apparently bald pates; others wore long blonde wigs with fringes abbreviated to a blunt chop high above the forehead. And pushing the macabre button, McQueen had added red contact lenses.
But what made this show such a remarkable achievement was that the artistry of the clothes more than matched...