Oyster dress

British designer Alexander McQueen was known in the fashion industry for his imaginative, sometimes controversial designs.[1][2] Although he worked in ready-to-wear – clothing produced for retail sale – his work featured a degree of craftsmanship that verged on haute couture.[3][4][5] Before launching his own label, McQueen apprenticed as a tailor on Savile Row, and he became known for a focus on tailored designs.[1][6][7] From 1996 to 2001, he was head designer at French luxury design house Givenchy, where he learned le flou, or draping, the dressmaking side of haute couture.[8][9][10]

McQueen's career roughly paralleled that of fellow British designer John Galliano, who preceded him in the industry by about a decade.[11][12][13] The men had each graduated from Central Saint Martins art school in London: Galliano in 1984, and McQueen in 1992.[13][14][15] Both had started their careers as independent designers before being hired by famous French fashion houses in the mid-1990s; McQueen had replaced Galliano at Givenchy when Galliano went to Dior.[14][16][17] Their designs and shows were similarly creative and theatrical.[18][19] Fashion journalists compared and contrasted their work and career choices, and they have sometimes been referred to as rivals.[18][19][20][21] McQueen, who had a competitive streak, resented being compared to Galliano and often sought to emulate or outdo Galliano's ideas in his own work.[22][23]

For his Spring/Summer 2003 collection, Irere, McQueen took inspiration from the Age of Discovery and the Amazon rainforest. He presented three sequential phases of ensembles: shipwrecked pirates, black-clad conquistadors, and colourful dresses inspired by tropical birds.[3][24][25][26] McQueen described the collection as an effort to present a more mature point of view and surprise viewers with bold colours.[3] Contemporary reception for Irere was positive, with many in the industry calling it one of the best collections for that season.[27][28]

The "oyster dress" is a riff on a 1987 design by John Galliano called the "shellfish dress".[29][30] Galliano's shellfish dress was named for its layers of "pearl grey" organza ruffles that resembled stacked clamshells, a technically complex design that was actually executed by costumier Karen Crichton.[31] McQueen had long admired and sought to emulate the complicated construction of the original.[32] According to friend Sebastian Pons, McQueen owned numerous "copies and photographs" of Galliano's dress and would study them intently, trying to work out how it was constructed.[32]

McQueen's design is a one-shouldered dress in bias-cut beige silk chiffon with a boned upper body and a full-length skirt.[33][34] Hundreds of individual circles of chiffon were sewn to the base fabric in dense layers, resembling an oyster shell or a mille-feuille pastry.[33][35][34] An estimated 180–260 metres (200–285 yd) of fabric was required.[3][34] According to McQueen, the gown took a month's work for three people to cut and assemble all the pieces.[3] The cost was reportedly £45,000.[36] In addition to the original beige dress, a version with a red bodice and the ruffled skirt in rainbow colours was also created.[37]

The original beige gown appeared in the first, pirate-themed phase of the Irere runway show as Look 18, worn by Leticia Birkheuer.[38][34] A version with a red bodice and the ruffled skirt in rainbow appeared in the final phase as Look 49, worn on the runway by An Oost.[37][38] Both versions appeared in magazines to promote the collection. Natalia Vodianova wore the oyster dress for two photo shoots: Vogue in January 2003, photographed by Craig McDean, and Harper's Bazaar in March 2003, photographed by Peter Lindbergh.[39] The rainbow oyster dress appeared on the cover of Vogue Italia for their Spring/Summer 2003 issue.[40] Joy Bryant wore it for a photoshoot for InStyle magazine in March 2003, calling it the "Rainbow Cancan" dress.[41]

Shellfish dress by John Galliano, 1987, displayed with a green and white checked cotton sash

The oyster dress is considered an iconic McQueen design; according to Pons and journalist Dana Thomas, it surpassed the famed Galliano original.[36][42] In a contemporary review, Jess Cartner-Morley wrote that the dress exemplified the show's maritime theme, with chiffon layers that were "as soft and close as ripples on sand".[38] Curator Kate Bethune wrote that it portrayed a sense of "[f]ragile femininity".[43] Thomas called McQueen's design "far more beautiful and elegant than the original" shellfish dress.[44] Fashion curator Andrew Bolton labelled it "arguably the most important dress of the 21st century".[45] For him, it was evidence that McQueen had expanded his skillset from his early focus on tailored designs and had mastered draping.[35] Philosopher Gwenda-lin Grewal compared the destroyed look of the oyster dress to the clothing of the 19th-century dandies and the 20th-century punks, both of which adopted torn clothing for aesthetic reasons.[46]

Following the show, McQueen estimated that 20 orders had been placed for copies of the oyster dress.[3] However, only two copies of the beige original are known to exist.[47] The Metropolitan Museum of Art (the Met) in New York City owns one, acquired in 2003.[lower-alpha 1][49] It appeared in their exhibitions Goddess: The Classical Mode (2003) and Blog Mode: Addressing Fashion (2008).[49] The Met's copy of the oyster dress appeared with other clothing from Irere in both stagings of the retrospective exhibition Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty.[50]

Media personality Kim Kardashian owns the other known oyster dress, purchased from Los Angeles vintage boutique Lily et Cie.[51] Its original owner was socialite Angie Barrett, who wore it to the Cannes Film Festival and Beaux-Arts Ball in 2003.[52][53] In 2020, Kardashian wore the oyster dress to an Oscars afterparty hosted by Vanity Fair.[51] In 2022, Rachel Tashjian described this as part of a trend for archival red carpet wear, noting that celebrities choosing vintage fashion was "basically the ultimate fashion flex right now".[54] Fashion theorist Naomi Braithwaite argued that in acquiring archival fashion items, such as the oyster dress, Kardashian was attempting to integrate the cultural history of those objects into her own celebrity narrative, thereby increasing her own cultural significance by association.[55]

McQueen returned to the oyster dress concept several times. Liv Tyler wore a variation of the oyster gown to the Paris premiere of The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers in December 2002. Her version had a corset bodice and a pink skirt made from 250 metres (273 yd) of silk organza.[56][57][58] He designed a wedding dress based on the oyster dress for the August 2004 wedding of his then-assistant Sarah Burton.[59][60] Watt and Thomas both described several dresses from The Widows of Culloden (Autumn/Winter 2006) as evolutions of the oyster dress, including the dress worn in the illusion of Kate Moss that served as the show's finale.[29][30]

• List of individual dresses

• Bethune, Kate (2015). "Encyclopedia of Collections". In Wilcox, Claire (ed.). Alexander McQueen. New York City: Abrams Books. pp. 303–326. ISBN 978-1-4197-1723-9. OCLC 891618596.
• Bolton, Andrew (2011). Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty. New York City: Metropolitan Museum of Art. ISBN 978-1-58839-412-5. OCLC 687693871.
• Breward, Christopher (2003). Fashion. Oxford History of Art. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-158773-3.
• Fairer, Robert; Wilcox, Claire (2016). Alexander McQueen: Unseen. New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press. ISBN 978-0-300-22267-8. OCLC 946216643.
• Fox, Chloe (2012). Vogue On: Alexander McQueen. Vogue on Designers. London: Quadrille Publishing. ISBN 978-1849491136. OCLC 828766756.
• Gleason, Katherine (2012). Alexander McQueen: Evolution. New York City: Race Point Publishing. ISBN 978-1-61058-837-9. OCLC 783147416.
• Grewal, Gwenda-lin (2022). Fashion | Sense: On Philosophy and Fashion. London: Bloomsbury Academic. ISBN 978-1-350-20148-4.
• Thomas, Dana (2015). Gods and Kings: The Rise and Fall of Alexander McQueen and John Galliano. New York City: Penguin Publishing. ISBN 978-1-101-61795-3. OCLC 951153602.
• Watt, Judith (2012). Alexander McQueen: The Life and the Legacy. New York City: Harper Design. ISBN 978-1-84796-085-6. OCLC 892706946.
• Wilson, Andrew (2015). Alexander McQueen: Blood Beneath the Skin. New York City: Simon and Schuster. ISBN 978-1-4767-7674-3. OCLC 1310585849.
• Young, Caroline; Martin, Ann (2017). Tartan + Tweed. London: Frances Lincoln Limited. ISBN 978-0-7112-3822-0. OCLC 947020251.

• "Women's Spring / Summer 03: "Irere"". Alexander McQueen. Archived from the original on 19 November 2010. Retrieved 6 November 2010.
• Alexander McQueen | Women's Spring/Summer 2003 | Runway Show on YouTube