Alexander McQueen Spring 2022 ‘Chasing Storms’ film

Review of Alexander McQueen ‘Chasing Storms’ Spring 2022 Collection Film by Creative Director Sarah Burton with Director Sophie Muller

Alexander McQueen looks to the sky with a beautiful new Spring Collection Launch with a film by director Sophie Muller.

From more literal references like cloud prints on blue fabric to more abstract interpretations like flowing layers, icy sequins, and airy cuts, the house’s collection was a beautiful ode to the dynamic beauty and power of the sky.

I love the idea of embracing the mystery and unpredictability of the sky, the fact it is always moving, always changing. I look out over London from our studio where the views are incredible and represent our home throughout history: from Saint Paul’s Cathedral to the London Eye. The sky against which those familiar monuments appear may be calm and restorative at times and menacing at others. For me, the tension between the two is extremely inspiring. It also evokes the paradoxes that have always been at the heart of Alexander McQueen.
– Sarah Burton, Alexander McQueen Creative Director

Drawing on the thematic aesthetics of the collection, Muller’s film captures its powerful and emotive heroines against the backdrop of shifting London skies. While we can see traces of skyline and familiar structures, she subtly shoots her subjects from below, lending them the feeling that they are floating over us like clouds. She also uses camera techniques like time lapse, slow motion, and multiple exposures to interweave the motion of the clouds with that of the women and the dresses they wear, creating a poetic dialogue and a sense of harmony between all of the elements.

Mirroring the spectrum of emotional skyscapes, the campaign’s protagonists range in mood and expression from sunlit joyousness to thunderous power. It’s also clear a lot of patience and forethought has gone into creating a conversation between the shifting conditions of the sky and the designs themselves: pink nimbus clouds with a pink chiffon dress, powerful storm clouds with a sharp black blazer.

While the collection’s runway show, presented in bubble domes on a Londo rooftop, was very strong, this campaign film feels like the presentation the film really wanted. It’s always great to see a collection in person, but the poetic effects of Muller’s time-lapse and multiple-exposure cinematography and the power of the sky and wind really draw out the character, motion, and presence of the pieces in a way that seeing a model simply walk in them can’t.

Sarah Burton is brilliant to recognize how the creative collaboration with the director can further unlock the magnificence of her own designs, and the resulting film is an exquisite ode to the beauty and power of the sky, with all its tension and change.