Eye (Alexander McQueen collection)
Jeweller and frequent McQueen collaborator Shaun Leane provided the collection's best-known design: a yashmak made from chainmail.
When McQueen walked out for his final bow, he dropped his trousers to display boxer shorts styled to look like the American flag.
Critical analysis has typically interpreted Eye as a statement about the contrast between the sexual and political values of the Western world and the Middle East.
[7][8][9] McQueen drew inspiration for his clothing and shows from a broad range of sources, including history, world religions, art, and his own life.
[14] He often used his work to explore themes of female victimisation, resistance, survival, and empowerment, although his aggressive, sexualised designs sometimes drew accusations of misogyny.
Inspired by Turkish music McQueen heard in a taxi as well as the London Arab community, the collection explored the culture of the Middle East, particularly Islamic clothing.
[24][26][27] Sportswear was presented in the form of football jerseys bearing red crescent moons, and boxing shorts with McQueen's name in faux-Arabic script.
[41] Another longtime associate, jeweller Shaun Leane, created a yashmak made to look like chainmail, consisting of aluminium plates inset with red Swarovski crystal cabochons.
[51][53] The move resulted in his show being nearly a week and a half earlier than it would have been in London, prompting a rush for his employees to ensure the collection was ready in time.
[59] Despite the weather, more than 1,000 guests attended, including several major fashion industry figures: Anna Wintour of Vogue, Kim Hastreiter of Paper, Katherine Betts of Harper's Bazaar, Hal Rubenstein of InStyle, and Patrick J. McCarthy, editorial director of Fairchild Publications.
[58][60][61] Models walked down a 100-foot (30-metre) catwalk filled with several inches of water, dyed black to resemble crude oil, a major Middle Eastern resource.
[66] The show's soundtrack was described by Alex Kuczynski at The New York Times as "ominous disco"; it also included drums and sounds of screaming.
Strobe lighting played while acrobats dressed in robes resembling burqas descended from the ceiling suspended from wires, floating, gyrating, and dancing.
[74] For The New York Times, Cathy Horyn called Eye "a great show, as circus goes", describing it as "art for fashion's sake".
[75] Libby Callaway of the New York Post agreed that the show mostly existed for the performance rather than for the fashion, but in a positive way, saying "Let's see Ralph [Lauren] or Donna [Karan] pull that off.
[67] The staff writer at Women's Wear Daily (WWD) and Robin Givhan of The Washington Post remarked on the irony of staging a fashion show that involved purposely dragging expensive high-end clothing through water.
[41] Suzy Menkes, writing for the International Herald Tribune, gave "high marks for showmanship" but wrote that McQueen had "missed the magical fusion of function and fantasy" that characterised his earlier shows.
[75] John Davidson for The Herald of Glasgow was ambivalent, saying that, although the clothing featured "clever cutting and magical decoration", it lacked McQueen's usual "finesse".
[82] Armstrong worried that McQueen's interest in increasing sales in the United States might lead him to undercut his creativity in pursuit of commercial gains.
[36] Scott found that the runway items "defied description, if not reasoning" but noted that McQueen's retail clothing was usually "more realistically wearable".
[81] Alexander appreciated the "precision cutting and elaborate detail", and felt that the loose harem-style trousers and tops "showed his softer side".
Writing in retrospect, authors Judith Watt and Andrew Wilson both regarded Eye as a commentary on contemporary American foreign policy in the Middle East and the resulting cultural conflict.
[42] Kate Bethune wrote that the appearance of traditional-looking tunic tops cut unusually high to reveal the midriff were a "comment on the concealment of the Middle Eastern female body", while the breast-exposing fetish harnesses "attested to Western liberalization".
[30] Speaking of the outfits that concealed the face but exposed the nipples and buttocks, Armstrong wrote: "In every McQueen collection, there's always an element that makes you wonder if he likes women at all.
"[77] Conversely, Holly Hanson of the Detroit Free Press argued that McQueen had backed up the shock value of Eye with "an intriguing point of view".
[31] Author Ana Finel Honigman wrote that the collection's sexualised niqāb designs "carried the poisonous sting of cultural appropriation and desecration".
[84] She compared Eye with Between (Spring/Summer 1998), a collection by Turkish Cypriot designer Hussein Chalayan which similarly explored women, clothing, and sexuality in Islam, but "from an insider's perspective".
[22][42][44] Curator Soyoung Lee wrote that the yashmak "signals mystery and forbiddance" by concealing the wearer's body and face yet possesses a "sensuous fluidity" in its movements.
[44] The original chainmail yashmak by Shaun Leane was reworked for McQueen's The Horn of Plenty (Autumn/Winter 2009), where it was presented as part of Look 42, underneath a silk gown printed with milk snakes in red, black, and white.
[24] When early McQueen employee Ruti Danan auctioned her personal archive in 2020, a pair of embroidered trousers from Eye sold for a reported US$1,875.
