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Alexander McQueen AW99: “The Overlook”

Inspired by Stanley Kubrick’s 1980 film “The Shining”, Alexander McQueen’s show for Autumn/Winter 1999 was both eerie and stunning. The audience sat outside of a large glass cube, inside which models not only walked, but ice-skated around the runway, which was filled with artificial snow. In the latter half of the show, snow fell from the ceiling of the cube in a beautiful effect. All of this emphasized the beautiful furs, elaborate bustiers, swing skirts, and luxurious knits. Among the most famous of the looks was jeweler Shaun Leane’s “Coiled Corset” (figure 2), which was cast custom to the model. Inspired by the necklaces of the Ndebele people of Southern Africa, McQueen asked Leane to recreate the idea of a necklace into a corset. In the words of Leane: 

“The “Coiled” Corset was a particularly amazing piece because I had to cast the model’s torso in concrete to get an exact form of her, and then I had to literally form every coil, one by one, front and back, and work all the way up, so that it was a perfect fit. And she’s actually placed into the corset, and then it’s screwed all along the side, and up the arms, and beside the neck. There are tiny, little bolts, so the model’s actually screwed into the piece.

It’s not heavy. It’s made from aluminum, and even though it looks quite restrictive, the model actually said the piece was actually very, very comfortable.

It’s a beautiful piece in my mind because it looks quite like armor, but then it’s very flattering to the female form, and it’s a really beautiful silhouette of the female form.

The beautiful thing about the whole collaboration, working with McQueen, was that it helped me push the boundaries of how jewelry should be perceived and how it should be worn, and we’re left with these beautiful iconic pieces.”