By now your Instagram feed might just have cleared of Kelela on stage at Rough Trade for McQ pics, replaced instead by a dozen visual interpretations of the phrase ‘look mum it’s sunny outside!’ (read: London Fields barbeques, pink blossom against a cloudless sky, upmarket cider bottles).
It seems as good a time as any then, to delve deeper and explore McQ’s latest offering, the Pre-Fall 16 ‘Swallow’ collection, for which said gig took place…
‘Leaving its decorative past behind’, reads the accompanying press notes, ‘and moving into visceral language, provocative and confrontational with lurid connotations’. The line revisits McQueen’s Hitchcock inspired SS95 collection – ‘The Birds’ – using the swallow motif as its core starting point.
Previously stamped across a pencil skirt worn by the infamous corset maker Mr Pearl, in 2016 the bird has been reimagined by artist Tom Tosseyn, the more traditional silhouette replaced by a creature with skull like eyes.
Comprised primarily of a palette of pink, black and white, a disorientating stripe print references work by campaign artist Jesse Draxler, while the animal’s moniker is written aloud across hoodies and the like; wide leg trousers guide the contemporary silhouette, while a subtle denim leg elsewhere occupies a casual aesthetic.
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