The Widows of Culloden
Fifty-one ensembles were presented across roughly three phases, ending with a Pepper's ghost illusion of English model Kate Moss projected within the glass pyramid.
"[14][16] In retrospect, Highland Rape is considered to be the launching point of McQueen's fame, and has been credited with leading to his appointment as head designer at French luxury fashion house Givenchy.
The battle led to British efforts to dismantle the Scottish clan system and ban the wearing of tartan, and has historically been mythologized as a conflict between Scotland and England.
[9][39] Several of the tartan garments included aspects of the traditional féileadh-mór, a large piece of fabric which is wrapped around the body and held by a belt, and the kilt, a knee-length wraparound skirt.
[64] Gosling's soundtrack incorporates songs from the 1993 film The Piano, scored by Michael Nyman; Scottish bagpipes and drums, various punk rock tracks, and a sound effect of howling wind.
[70][72] The show closed with a Pepper's ghost illusion within the glass pyramid, featuring a life-sized projection of Kate Moss, an English model and friend of McQueen's, wearing a billowing chiffon dress.
[59][74] The show opened with Ukrainian model Snejana Onopka wearing a tweed suit with a fur collar, cream shirt with ruffled front, and tan-coloured leather boots.
[42] Fashion theorist Jonathan Faiers wrote that the lavish use of game bird feathers evoked Scotland's transformation into a "sports arena for absentee English landlords" in the late Victorian era.
[77] Look 33 was a one-shouldered tartan dress with tulle underskirt, styled with an undershirt of sheer fabric with rose designs in black, creating an illusion of arm and chest tattoos.
[75] Brazilian model Raquel Zimmermann wore Look 47, one of the collection's most-discussed ensembles, a full-length ivory gown in silk tulle and lace with an antlered headdress.
[52] According to Susannah Frankel at The Independent, the show was "a return to the unbridled spectacle and raw power with which he made his name", citing its "juxtaposition of fragility and strength, masculinity and femininity".
[22] Edinburgh-based journalists Caroline Young and Ann Martin wrote that the collection's slim-fit tailored tartan suits "presented the designer's refined craftsmanship at its very best".
[37][99][100] Deborah Bell, a professor of costume design, cited curator Andrew Bolton in noting that the "romantic version of historic narrative" from Highland Rape and Widows was "profoundly autobiographical" for McQueen, and suggests this is the reason that it was so impactful.
[101] Fashion theorists Paul Jobling, Philippa Nesbitt, and Angelene Wong called the collection "a personal reckoning with [McQueen's] own past", particularly his relationships with his mother, sister, and Isabella Blow.
[106] Costume curator Lilia Destin noted that the collection subverted typical historical narratives by decentring warriors in favour of their widows, and wrote that it "awards their ghosts a sense of transhistorical agency through memory".
[108] Historian Timothy Campbell wrote about Highland Rape and Widows in the coda to his 2016 book Historical Style, describing them as counter-arguments to the notion that traumatic events in history must be experienced only in a state of grief.
[1][25][35] McQueen himself reflected that Widows displayed a more positive view of Scotland, and related the difference to his own mental health, saying "I'm in a much clearer head space now than I was when I did the Highland.
[110] Art historian Ghislaine Wood wrote that the "two collections provided contrasting but cathartic narratives on specific historical events ... and in many ways they reflect the complexity and drama of McQueen's vision".
[118] The mood of Widows may be read as part of a shift toward darkness and melancholy as an aesthetic in fashion, which some authors have argued was a response to global turmoil and increased nihilism following the turn of the century.
[94][119][120] Art historian Bonnie English noted that McQueen was one of a number of major designers, including Karl Lagerfeld, John Galliano, Yohji Yamamoto, and Marc Jacobs, who produced sombre collections for the Fall/Winter 2006 season.
[121] In a 2019 New York Times essay discussing the cultural archetype of the melancholy woman, writer Leslie Jamison described Highland Rape and Widows as emblematic of an "aesthetic of suffering" in fashion.
[126][127] Heaton, whose work focuses on the intersection between fashion and literature, described these two long white dresses as "revisionist" wedding gowns that evoke the Gothic to subvert its limitations.
[128] The illusion of Moss, on the other hand, evokes the Gothic trope of the barefoot "mad woman"; normally this figure would be confined to an attic or asylum, but again McQueen subverts the expectation by displaying her to the public, making her ephemeral and uncontained.
[129] For Seidl, far from presenting feminine strength, the antlers in combination with the gamekeepers' clothing referenced earlier in the show evoked an image of the bride as a hunting trophy.
[129] Post-humanist theorist Justyna Stępień argued that McQueen's use of unusual silhouettes and structures, particularly in Widows and Plato's Atlantis (Spring/Summer 2010), provoked an emotional reaction in the audience and forced them to reconsider their perception of the human body.
[131] They further argue that McQueen's combination of "masculine" tartan with "feminine" fabrics like lace is another subversion of the gender binary, allowing the widows to step into a liberated role following the deaths of their husbands.
[108] Writer Cassandra Atherton described using several McQueen collections, including Widows, in a university-level creative writing course to teach a connection between poetry and fashion, particularly how one can inspire the other.
[136][137] Look 47, The Widow's Weeds, and Look 48, the chiffon dress with butterfly accessories, appeared in "Dark Angel", a 2015 retrospective editorial of McQueen's work in British Vogue by fashion photographer Tim Walker.
[138] Actress Sarah Jessica Parker attended the opening of the 2006 AngloMania: Tradition and Transgression in British Fashion exhibition at the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art (The Met) wearing a version of Look 33 from Widows, the one-shouldered tartan dress.
[161] Items from the collection appeared in the 2022 exhibition Lee Alexander McQueen: Mind, Mythos, Muse, first shown at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and later in expanded form at the National Gallery of Victoria.
