Over the years Alexander McQueen has laid out an ongoing fairytale steeped in drama and mystery, garnering him the highest honour amongst fashion’s formidable elite. For Spring/Summer 2007, his newest chapter was a twisted tale of dark romance. A Barry Lyndon meets Princess Leia ghostly dream of historic plot devices filtered through a modern narrative.

McQueen has always stood alone as a designer and showman, though the past few seasons he has been disappointingly subdued. Fall/winter 2006, saw him reclaim the title with an extraordinary collection meant to challenge the death and destruction in the news with a reminder that there is beauty to be found, even in melancholy and the dark romance that McQueen likes so well. He presented the mood of the season in the collection of the season. Enjoy.

The name Alexander McQueen generally evokes a few thoughts: Gothic imagery, impeccable tailoring and showmanship GALORE. But much like last season, McQueen chose to carry over the sombre theme of a typical runway exhibit for Spring/Summer 2006. A new direction for McQueen certainly, but one that looks to be coming up short, in more ways than one.

This season, bad boy designer Alexander McQueen’s fuses Hitchcock blondes and fifties bad girls to create one of his most commercial collections to date. Chic biker girls that look like they’ve had their makeup on all night rub shoulders with Tippi Hedren look-alikes on McQueen’s catwalk. The result? A kind of rock ‘n’ roll couture.

With McQueen’s reputation for satire and metaphor, a game of chess leaves plenty of questions about hidden meanings. This collection, however, started by referencing Vanessa Beecroft, the Italian artist who tends to stand identically-dressed - or undressed - models in a room as live art installations. McQueen never strays too far from film however, and so the Australian film “Picnic at Hanging Rock”, and school girls from the turn of the twentieth century evolved into a game of Harry Potter proportions.

After last season’s show stopper, Alexander McQueen wanted to utterly strip his latest presentation of theatrics. But such is the scale of the man’s imagination that spectacle is never really far away with a McQueen show.

Alexander McQueen is predictable in only one way: he is consistently innovative.
Every season the British born designer explores new territory with his collections and his presentations. And every season the fashion world is eager to follow him wherever he goes.
This season, with a 1969 Sydney Pollack film for inspiration, he took his audience dancing.

In many ways, this Fall 2003 collection was classic Alexander McQueen. The full skirts, sharp suiting, and intriguingly complicated construction have all become his hallmarks, but this season also seemed to have a strong focus on the bigger picture and an unusual attention to seasonal trends. To bridge the divide between the spectacle of the catwalk and the average retail client, Fashion File followed Evelyn Gorman, the owner of the ultra-hip Mix Boutique in Houston, Texas, as she visited the McQueen showroom and bought from the Fall 2003 collection for her boutique. This is the ultimate illustration of how the most outrageous runway show ultimately translates to reality.

With the help of filmmaker John Maybury, Alexander McQueen presented a breathtaking Amazonian adventure in three acts. Drawing on the 1986 film, The Mission, McQueen blended elements of the eighteenth century, the Catholic church and the Brazilian rainforest in a spectacle he named "Irere" - the Amazonian word for transformation. Apparently feeling enlightened himself from his alliance with Gucci, fashion's former bad boy launched himself into an exhilarating exploration of colour and light. The resulting collection? A technical masterpiece that ran away with the Spring 2003 season.

Under the arches of the former prison where French aristocrats awaited their revolutionary fate, one of fashion's own revolutionaries etched yet another memorable moment in his histrionic career. Inspired in part by filmmakers like Tim Burton and Peter Greenaway, Alexander McQueen peopled his collection with storybook characters and rock idols. From frozen princesses to gothic vixens, this hauntingly beautiful collection was seeped in mixed metaphors. McQueen's complex and vivid imagination often thrusts his collections into the domain of performance art, but with this, his first real collection with the backing of the Gucci group, McQueen proves that his brand of creativity can happily co-exist with commerce.

Alexander McQueen always brought an energy to the London Fashion scene that in turn fueled the city's renaissance as a fashion capital. But this season McQueen decided to show in Paris and presented a matador collection infused with a raw sexuality made possible by razor sharp cutting and an inventive imagination. There is always an underlying biographical heartbeat to everything McQueen does and the inspiration behind this collection was the designer's newfound freedom and a subsequent escape to Spain.