Supernature, the Cosmos, the Night Sky: Alexander McQueen Men’s SS23

The Alexander McQueen Spring/Summer 2023 Menswear collection is inspired by "science and structure," fused with "supernature, the cosmos, and the night sky."

Supernature: The Natural History of the Supernatural seeks to reconcile these ideas. Published in 1973 by author ethologist Lyall Watson, the book provides plausible explanations to "the unexplained," applying scientific rationale to supernatural phenomena. The result is a demonstration of how complexity can inhabit simple things, and how simplicity can be located in seemingly complex ones. Diamonds are a form of carbon, with the element's atoms arranged in a crystal structure – a process requiring a single element and the addition of heat and pressure, a straightforward recipe resulting in a thing that is as intelligible as it is mystifying. Sun, moon, and celestial bodies influence the tides of Earth and assert force on ourselves – an uncomplicated notion, like that of gravity, but one that continues to bewilder us.

"Life arose by order out of chaos and maintains this order by collecting information from the cosmos," writes Watson. "Cosmic forces bombard earth all the time, but the movement of celestial bodies and the movement of earth in relation to these bodies produces a pattern that provides useful information." In grain de poudre and metallic sequin flourishes, "double diamond" prints and astral embroidery, rational tailoring and bewitched embellishments, Alexander McQueen communicates in clothing something like what Watson distills in Supernature: that we, bound together in similar structure and function to all things, are "involved in an open dialogue with the universe ... that unites all life into one vast organism that is itself part of an even larger dynamic structure" – and that we, for all our special features, are an integral part of this whole.