Sarah Burton is stepping down from the house of Alexander McQueen. After Lee McQueen passed away in 2010, Burton was quickly declared the heir apparent for the label. Burton been a quiet creative director for 13 years, rarely giving interviews or responding to criticism or compliments. Personally, I never thought that Burton really carried on McQueen’s vision, but she stabilized the brand and made it more palatable to a larger swath of consumers. I also hate that this news is being framed as “Princess Kate’s wedding dress designer is retiring.”
The designer behind the Princess of Wales’s wedding dress has announced she is stepping down as creative director of fashion house Alexander McQueen after 13 years, prompting speculation she may set up her own label.
Sarah Burton has dressed the Princess throughout the most significant moments in her royal life – from her historic 2011 wedding dress, to the red chiffon gown she wore in her 40th birthday portraits in 2022 – and fashion industry insiders think she may now set up her own namesake brand creating private orders for the royal.
Burton had worked under the label’s founder, Lee McQueen, for more than 14 years before his untimely death in February 2010, and was appointed as his successor that May. She is credited for successfully continuing his design legacy, adapting the house’s darkly romantic codes to suit a new generation of fans – including bringing in the Princess as a star client.
[From The Telegraph]
The story, within the fashion industry, is not “will Sarah Burton start her own label,” it’s “wtf is going on at Kering?” Kering is the massive fashion/fragrance conglomerate which wholly owns the McQueen label and wholly or partly owns dozens of other labels, plus major fragrance lines. Kering is doing a major house-cleaning across many of its best-known brands, and that’s what this looks like – like Burton was forced out by Kering as part of a move to make all of Kering’s brands more profitable and palatable to modern consumers. Which is actually bad news for McQueen’s biggest client, the Princess of Wales. Kate often used Burton as her personal atelier, all to make ridiculous button-covered coat dresses and Downton Abbey cosplay. Kering is like: yeah, that sh-t isn’t profitable long-term, and we need to shake up the brand so “McQueen” won’t be synonymous with this dated, frumpy Keen Kate-style.
Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, WENN, Backgrid.
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