Shaun Leane Returns to Alexander McQueen Runway After 16 Years
Jeweller Shaun Leane is returning to the Alexander McQueen runway after 16 years.
He has made three pieces in collaboration with Seán McGirr, the creative director of Alexander McQueen, the British fashion house. The pieces will be worn by models at the house's comeback catwalk show in London on Sunday, according to WWD.
The show brings Alexander McQueen back to the London Fashion Week schedule after seasons showing regularly in Paris. London Fashion Week is one of the four main ready-to-wear showcases, alongside New York, Milan and Paris. The return puts the house in front of a home audience.
Leane made jewellery and sculptural metal designs for founder Lee Alexander McQueen's shows until McQueen's death in 2010. It was hands-on work. The partnership ran through the 1990s and 2000s and helped define how jewellery sat within a fashion show, not beside it.
Among the best-known results were a coiled corset and a silver Crown of Thorns. The corset was inspired by Burmese neck rings and first appeared in The Overlook collection for autumn 1999. Both pieces later appeared in the Savage Beauty exhibitions at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.
Since that period Leane has launched 12, a craft-based atelier specialising in bespoke commissions and one-off designs. An atelier in this sense is a small workshop. Bespoke means made to order for an individual client.
The link with McQueen has stayed visible. In 2015 he released a 22-piece Quill collection inspired by McQueen, including silver and gold vermeil quill pendants, rings, leather bracelets and cuffs, according to WWD. Vermeil is silver coated with a layer of gold. In 2017 more than 30 original pieces he designed for McQueen went under the hammer in New York in a sale by Sotheby's, the auction house, titled "Couture Jewelry: The Personal Archive of Shaun Leane" WWD.
What makes this stand out is the scale. Three pieces only. Sixteen years away. For viewers on Sunday, it means a brief meeting of past craft and present direction, worn on the catwalk rather than kept behind glass.
