Plato's Atlantis: Anatomy of a Collection

McQueen's fascination with the elemental - earth, wind, fire and water - imbued his collections with primordial drama. Plato's Atlantis, his last fully realized collection, was inspired by the story of the lost city of Atlantis, which according to the classical philosopher Plato was submerged following a volcanic eruption over 2,000 years ago. McQueen's Darwinian preoccupation with survival, in the face of rising seawater, offered an otherworldly narrative of adaption on the part of the human race by reversion to an amphibian state. His exquisite digitally printed and engineered designs, corroded metallic embroidery and scale-like beading reflected this process of morphogenesis, as the garments mutated and disintegrated, finally transforming his army of replicants into a glistening new aquatic species.

This book was edited by Claire Wilcox, who also curated the 2015 London version of the Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty exhibition.

Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty became the V&A's most visited exhibition with 493,043 people seeing it in total during its almost five month run.

The original version of Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York in 2011 was organised by the Costume Institute and became one of the museum's top 10 most visited exhibitions.

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