Sarah Burton's final collection for Alexander McQueen

Sarah Burton says goodbye to Alexander McQueen with triumphant collection; Gabriela Hearst leaves Chloé.

At the end of the Alexander McQueen show, after Naomi Campbell walked by in a silver beaded dress with a heart-shaped bib, a bodice and a skirt dripping with curls of fringe, and the audience had risen to its feet for a standing ovation, designer Sarah Burton came out to take a bow. It would be, everyone knew, her last for the brand.

She was leaving the house she had made her own after having assumed the role of its founder and his mentor following his suicide in 2010. “Heroes” by David Bowie was playing over the speakers. It was an appropriate song to go out to. Because over the past 13 years, Ms. Burton has been as close to a hero as fashion has been.

She has made sure that the name McQueen has a life, not just a legacy. , it continued; I took him out of tragedy and trauma and gently guided him towards the light. I took a brand built on clothes that vibrated with tension, drama and danger (you never really knew what you were going to get when you went to a McQueen show) and gave it heart.< /p>

It's hard to remember today, in an era where celebrities like Cate Blanchett, Elle Fanning and Jon Batiste, all in the audience, compete to wear McQueen to red carpet events, but that was far from the case. a certainty that the brand would outlast its namesake. At the time, the industry was widely declaiming that no one – no one! — could possibly follow in Lee Alexander McQueen's footsteps (or his armadillo-shod platform hoof steps, to be exact). That no one could make a suit with the outrageous combination of technical skill and wild imagination he brought to the job, and that it was disrespectful of Kering (then Gucci Group), which announced in 2000 that it had bought the brand, to even try.

What Ms. Burton, an unknown (even though she had worked alongside Mr. McQueen for 12 years), did, was an act of courage and faith. who first held the company together, then proved that it was possible for a designer to inherit an aesthetic and, rather than reject or dutifully imitate it, understand it and make it your own. Not just in form and pattern, but in spirit.

ImageAlexander McQueen, spring 2024Credit...Ik Aldama

ImageAlexander McQueen, spring 2024Credit...Ik Aldama

Mrs. Burton embraced Mr. McQueen's militarized tailoring and drama, but gave the brand a grace and generosity that hadn't been present before. It was such a resounding change that just a year after Ms. Burton was named creative director, she made Kate Middleton's wedding dress, which made McQueen a name that represented not just the extremes of fashion , but also modern Britain.

Just Why was visible in Ms. Burton's final show, which she dedicated to "Lee Alexander McQueen, whose wish has always been about empowering women, and to the passion, talent and loyalty of my team. .” This was not an elegy or a greatest hits tour, but a defiant and triumphant celebration of female corporeality and strength of all kinds.