Milan’s Best Men's Show: Alexander McQueen

The most original and coolest and cleverest show in the Milan’s men season that ended Tuesday night was by Alexander McQueen. Part posh futurist romp, part tailoring tutorial, part an essay in men’s couture, the collection seethed with ideas and images, setting it miles apart from the sabbatical chic which dominated runways in a Milan, suffering at the cash register from Italian economic blues.

Fashion critics, professionally condemned to make snap judgments, say you can often tell whether a collection will work form the first look. At the McQueen show in a tattered south Milan warehouse, the first passage sent a visible ripple of excitement down the front row – a brilliantly well cut beige jacket with golden trim paired over similarly hued crew neck and a pair of sleek gray pants high with a high waist. It sounds simple, yet it was far from it thanks to the exact precision of the shawl collar, the perfect way the jacket swung and quirkily arranged waistband, or rather lack of any.

The waistline was a big story in Milan, where designers like Raf Simons at Jil Sander and Frida Giannini at Gucci doubled and tripled them with contrasting horizontal strips. McQueen took two different tack, adding a double three-inch band or eschewing the waistband altogether. For in our age of morning sit-ups for the vain and almost de rigueur gym membership for the ambitious, who needs a waistband anyway to keep the stomach flatter?

Even when Lee kept a classic silhouette, using the techniques he learned as a youth while working on Savile Row, there was always an unlikely edge. So John Steed style suits came in with sleeves and sides in an optical illusion jagged check, or sleek jackets in audacious burgundy nylon ottoman had transparent stripes to separate sleeve from torso, trouser leg from waistband. And the clothes were even downright uncanny - smoke signals on jackets were not simple prints by actually woven into the fabric with a computer program.

The designer also mixed in some great new pre-collection looks from his women’s wear collection, wowing with a magnificently cool cocktail with miniature, horizontal golden bars. One of those dresses that, if worn right, makes every girl at the party jealous, every man swoon. A don’t you dare not have the guts to wear this look, only a too conventional lass would turn down.

Above all there was a great sense of joie de vivre about this collection, suitably entitled “I Love You” and featuring a 3D invite of a mouth saying those very words.

Our response? We love you too Lee.

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