McQueen is dead. Long live McQueen!

Sarah Burton’s skilled, rigorous reinvention of Alexander McQueen

“Just burn the place down,” Lee Alexander McQueen told a fashion journalist who had asked him what should happen to his brand after his death. “My shows are so personal, how can that be?”

Indeed, when a brand’s founder dies, especially one with as strong and clear a vision as his, how do you carry a brand forward? How can you even “reinvent” a brand like McQueen?

If the essence of strategy is sacrifice (or focus, depending on your view), designer Sarah Burton -- who just left the brand after 13 years at its helm -- and the rest of her team made a clear strategic decision about what to do with the McQueen brand without Lee.?

After Lee’s tragic death (I’ll use his first name to delineate between the person and the brand) and the immediate task of finishing his brilliant last collection, the McQueen team smartly realized something that would shape the future of the McQueen brand:?

You can’t replace or copy Lee McQueen himself: his genius, his rebelliousness, the “savage beauty” that captured the world’s imagination.?And the shows that brought it all to vivid life.

That part of the brand was indeed dead, along with him.

But there was much he and his team established to carry forward into the future. And that’s where Sarah Burton came in.?

To me, Sarah Burton’s careful stewardship of the brand in the 13 years is a master class in reinventing and being a good custodian of a brand: knowing what to bring with you, and what not to, and sticking to it. (She also helped the McQueen brand grow in the Kering portfolio to an estimated 800 million-euro-per-year business, driven mostly by clothing, so clearly she did something right.)

Burton had a head start, first with Lee as an unpaid intern and then as his ready-to-wear design director. In essence, she was in charge of making Lee’s provocative, fantastical shows and concepts into commercial realities.??

(The story of her time with the brand - pre- and post-Lee - is expertly documented in this feature with Cathy Horyn. Worth a read!)

Over the next 13 years, Burton created a McQueen brand that built on its signature codes, but was filtered through her own personal lens. But that also meant leaving a lot of McQueen in the past.?

Instead of building the brand off of provocative shows and wild flights of fancy, she instead looked more deeply at what could make McQueen an enduring brand.?

She took the DNA of McQueen - really, a respect and reverence for women, their symbolism, and their form - and transformed it with a perspective only a woman who deeply knew Lee McQueen can bring.

There's much Burton left behind, but there's much she took with her, built on, and made her own -- for the good of the brand:

MCQUEEN CODE 1: POWERFUL FEMININITY that celebrated and revered women. Even in his most controversial collections, Lee made clear statements about how women have been depicted, treated, and mythologized -- and transformed even the most uncomfortable associations into powerful images and clothes that women aspired to.?

• BURTON’S TAKE: This is where Burton leaned in and brought her own perspective the most. As a woman, she made it her prerogative to continue Lee’s reverence for women, but was choiceful in how she did. Where Lee touched on uncomfortable subjects -- Scottish subjugation under Britain in “Highland R*pe,” mental illness in “VOSS,” or overconsumption in “Horn of Plenty -- she built her collections and designs from a more positive place, referencing numerous female artists, the natural world, and British symbolism and craft. She opened the aperture on what a powerful female form looked like, often including non-sample-size models in shows and enlisting French signer Yseult for campaigns. In doing so, she presented women who were not necessarily powerful despite the surrounding world, but powerful on their own.?

MCQUEEN CODE 2: RIGOROUS & INVENTIVE TAILORING that accentuated and complemented the female form - “bumsters,” exaggerated shoulders, defined waists, catsuits - that drew from Lee’s preternatural tailoring skill and his early days on Savile Row.?

• BURTON’S TAKE: Burton carried forward these signature cuts and shapes throughout her tenure, refining them, adding new materials and contexts, but never strayed too far away from the silhouettes that made McQueen a sought-after brand. Even in her final show, you saw slashed-open shoulders,?intricately beaded catsuits, accentuated waists, and dramatic gowns that all recalled earlier McQueen creations, but had a stamp all her own.

MCQUEEN CODE 3: INGENIOUS CRAFT that transformed everyday objects and unexpected references into haute couture-level creations: dresses made from cellophane, razor clam shells, or tissue sample slides. Images of animal skins and industrial architecture manipulated into new patterns. Recognizable garments - jackets, skirts, shirts - slashed open, pieced back together, combined with other fabrics and textures to create something new.?

• BURTON’S TAKE: Burton not only carried this dedication to craft onward, but deepened it. The height of the brand’s craft was showcased early on in her tenure, of course, through one of the most recognizable dresses of the early 20th century - the Duchess of Cambridge’s wedding dress. But Burton continued to push and expand on its atelier's incredible abilities. The brand brought this to life through comms programs that reinforced the young brand's heritage: Unlocking Stories and McQueen Roses were two such programs - not only showing off the brand’s impressive archives, but inviting in young design talent to learn and engage in collaboration with the McQueen atelier. Under Burton, McQueen’s craft deployed in service of more than spellbinding fashion - it was harnessed to engage the next generation.?

Burton’s approach has had its detractors, namely in the fashion commentary class, who missed the “savagery” and showmanship of Lee’s McQueen. And over the years, casual observers and critics found her work to be repetitive, without the wild swings from reference to reference that you saw in Lee’s shows.?Burton preferred evolution over revolution every season.

But one could also argue that the repetition was rigorous code-building - in the same ways that iconic designers like Azzedine Alaia repeatedly went back to refine signature silhouettes and styles over time.?

As a brand strategist, I think what she’s done is nothing short of remarkable. The brand could have died with Lee. It could have transferred to someone intent on trying to recapture the magic of Lee’s iconic fashion moments that never fully reached the dizzying heights of his best.?

Now that she's left the brand, her impact is truly appreciated in arrears. At her spectacular last show in October, her show notes made clear exactly what she’d always tried to achieve for the brand: "The show is dedicated to the memory of Lee Alexander McQueen, whose wish was always to empower women, and to the passion, talent and loyalty of my team."

She wasn’t thinking about pleasing critics or Lee’s fans by trying to recreate his savage beauty, she was thinking about building a brand that empowered women, and would live on without Lee -- or her.?

Her successor, a relative unknown, would be wise to follow her lead.?