The Overlook is the fourteenth collection by British fashion designer Alexander McQueen, released for the Autumn/Winter 1999 season of his eponymous fashion house. It was inspired by the Stanley Kubrick horror film The Shining (1980) and named for the fictional Overlook Hotel where much of the film takes place. The collection focused on winter clothing in light and neutral colours, including chunky knitwear, fur and shearling coats, and parkas inspired by Inuit clothing. Showpiece items included a bustier made from rock crystal and a corset made from coils of aluminium, the latter provided by jeweller and frequent McQueen collaborator Shaun Leane.
The runway show was staged on 23 February 1999 at Gatliff Road Warehouse in London. Several celebrities attended, including Vogue editor Anna Wintour, who was making her first appearance at a McQueen show. The square stage was enclosed by a large Lucite box. The inside, lit by thousands of candles, was dressed to look like a birch forest in winter, complete with artificial snow and an icy floor. Production was handled by McQueen's usual creative team. Seventy-three looks were presented in the main runway show, interrupted by a brief entr'acte during which several models skated around the enclosure. The show earned a standing ovation, regarded as a rare achievement in the fashion world.
Critical response to the clothing and the runway show for The Overlook was mostly positive, and it is regarded as one of McQueen's most memorable shows. Some observers criticised the collection for being unrealistic, and others objected to the use of real fur. Academic analysis has focused on the show's interpretation of The Shining and themes of isolation through the medium of clothing. The coiled corset was the sole item from The Overlook to appear in the original 2011 staging of the retrospective exhibit Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty.
Background British designer Alexander McQueen was known in the fashion industry for his imaginative, sometimes controversial designs. Over the course of his career, which lasted from 1992 until his death in 2010, he explored a broad range of ideas and themes, particularly sexuality, death, violence, romanticism, and historicism. His fashion shows were theatrical to the point of verging on performance art. He began his career in fashion as an apprentice on Savile Row, and the skills he developed there earned him a lifelong reputation as an expert tailor. Early in his career, his runway presentations were violent and shocking, and audiences began to expect his shows to feature macabre dramatics. From October 1996 to October 2001, he was head designer at French luxury design house Givenchy, where he learned , or draping, the dressmaking side of .
McQueen's personal fixations had a strong influence on his designs and shows, especially his love of film, which he drew on from the beginning of his career with his first commercial collection, Taxi Driver (Autumn/Winter 1993), named for the 1976 Martin Scorsese film. Other explicitly film-inspired collections include The Birds (Spring/Summer 1995), The Hunger (Spring/Summer 1996), Deliverance (Spring/Summer 2004), and The Man Who Knew Too Much (Autumn/Winter 2005).
McQueen often worked with other creatives to produce things outside his area of expertise for runway shows, such as hats or jewellery. He had a light touch with collaborators, providing short creative briefs that permitted latitude for interpretation, and often did not see the work he had commissioned until right before the show. McQueen had a longstanding and particularly close collaboration with jeweller Shaun Leane, who had worked with him as early as Highland Rape (Autumn/Winter 1995). The two met during their student years; Leane was trained as a classical goldsmith who worked in traditional formats, but McQueen encouraged him to branch out into other materials and shapes.
Concept and creative process The Overlook (Autumn/Winter 1999) was the fourteenth collection by McQueen for his eponymous fashion house. It was inspired by the Stanley Kubrick horror film The Shining (1980) and named after the fictional Overlook Hotel where much of the film takes place. McQueen stated that the collection was intended to echo the film's "sense of isolation and obscurity". Separately, he said that he "wanted to confront misconceptions of size and matter" with the collection. Journalist Suzy Menkes suggested the emphasis on knitwork and embroidery may have been drawn from the Arts and Crafts movement, which had strongly influenced McQueen's previous collection, No. 13 (Spring/Summer 1999).
Although The Shining is known for its dark and violent subject matter, McQueen surprised the audience by instead taking inspiration from its wintery, isolated setting, while making several visual references to the film. He referenced the film's ghostly sisters in Look 40, which featured a pair of identically styled models walking hand in hand. Hexagonal shapes reflected the Overlook Hotel's carpet pattern. The show concluded with an artificial snowstorm reminiscent of the blizzard that ends the film.
The palette was primarily light and neutral colours: black, white, grey, and soft pink. The collection focused on romantic interpretations of winter clothing and pseudo-skiwear: garments made from thick jersey, chunky knitted items, and parkas inspired by Inuit clothing. McQueen incorporated materials sourced from animals, including crocodile skin, leather, rabbit fur, and shearling. As was typical with McQueen, there was a heavy emphasis on tailored garments, especially frock coats and fit and flare dresses. One frock coat had a fanned tail, referencing McQueen's love of birds and asymmetrical designs. Skirts were pleated or bubbled, making them voluminous. McQueen's signature low-rise "bumster" trousers also made an appearance. Other repeated design elements included patchwork garments, painted and embroidered roses, Swarovski crystal decorations, and garments made from metal. The boots worn by the models had heels resembling ice skate blades.
Runway show
Production details The runway show was staged on 23 February 1999 at Gatliff Road Warehouse in London. It was dedicated to Stanley Kubrick, then recently deceased. The show's invitation was a sheet of white A4 paper with the proverb "all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy" typed repeatedly, echoing the way Shining protagonist Jack Torrance obsessively types the phrase while losing his mind. There were technical issues backstage, including a small fire and a malfunctioning artificial snow machine, although these were resolved without interrupting the show. Several celebrities attended, including Kate Winslet, Helen Mirren, Cate Blanchett, Grace Jones, and members of trip hop group Massive Attack. Industry figures in attendance included Nicole Fischelis, fashion director of the department store Saks Fifth Avenue, and Vogue editor Anna Wintour, who was making her first appearance at a McQueen show. McQueen's mother Joyce was also in the audience.
McQueen typically worked with a consistent creative team for his shows. Katy England was responsible for overall styling, while Gainsbury & Whiting oversaw production. Joseph Bennett returned for set design. Nicolas Jurnjack styled hair, while Val Garland, a frequent McQueen collaborator, handled makeup. Jeweller Shaun Leane produced jewellery and metalwork, and product designer Kees van der Graaf returned to create a bodice made from rock crystal.
The soundtrack mostly relied on orchestral music from The Shining, including the 1934 version of "Midnight, The Stars and You" with Al Bowlly and Ray Noble and his Orchestra. The sound of wolves howling and wind blowing was added to the mix. Because the vinyl release of the film's soundtrack was difficult to find at the time, sound designer John Gosling had to pull the music from VHS tapes. McQueen took his bow to the Frank Sinatra song "Come Fly with Me".
Catwalk presentation
The square stage was enclosed by a Lucite box; it was the first of two collections which McQueen staged this way. The inside, lit by thousands of candles, was dressed to look like a birch forest in winter, with 25 tons of artificial snow and an icy floor. In a 2018 interview with Vogue, model Frankie Rayder recalled McQueen surprising her with the ice during a pre-show conversation:
Models were styled with braided grey hair and silver paint over their eyes, eyelashes, eyebrows, and lower foreheads, resembling masks or stripes of ice. Fashion theorist Janice Miller felt that the connotations of transformation and concealment associated with masks made the makeup "strange, beautiful, and wistful". Curator Kate Bethune considered the faintly Native American look of the models' braided hair and exaggerated face makeup to be a reference to the cursed Native American burial ground on which the film's Overlook Hotel was built.
Seventy-three looks were presented in the main runway show. The show opened with roughly a dozen outfits in black, including a sleeveless high-necked bodice of crocodile skin paired with a leather skirt. These looks were followed by a phase of garments in soft brown, taupe, and pink. A section of looks in grey followed, including several showpiece items. Look 38 was a metallic sculpted bodice trimmed with fur. Look 40 featured a pair of models, styled identically with red hair, shaved eyebrows, and grey dresses walking hand in hand. The others were Shaun Leane's work: a metal corset made from coils of aluminium (Look 47) and a knee-length aluminium skirt with laser-cut arabesques (Look 50).
After Look 53, the lights went down, and there was a three-minute entr'acte in which a group of seven models led by professional skater Marika Humphreys skated around the stage. When the skating ended, the music cut out. The lights came back up, flickering, accompanied by an artificial snowstorm and the sound of howling wolves. The show resumed with Look 54, a bodice made of rock crystal worn with McQueen's signature low-rise "bumster" trousers in white, followed by another eleven looks all in white. The show earned a standing ovation, regarded as a rare achievement in the fashion world.
Notable pieces The rock crystal bustier and the coiled corset – which McQueen called the "Cossack ensemble" – are the most significant pieces from the show. Both were made using body casts of model Laura Morgan which had been produced for No. 13 by van der Graaf. McQueen was known for giving extremely simple creative briefs and allowing his collaborators the freedom to interpret them creatively. Van der Graaf recalled his brief for the bodice from Look 54 as being little more than McQueen asking him "how 'bout a crystal bodice?". He thought of rough quartz rock crystals, only later learning that McQueen had had Swarovski crystals in mind. He told interviewer Lousie Rytter that McQueen's "brevity gave me room to manoeuvre".
Leane built the aluminium corset over the course of six weeks, working 16-hour days. McQueen had requested that he interpret the neck rings traditionally worn by the Southern Ndebele people into an item that covered the entire torso. Leane had previously made a coiled neck ring with a similar brief for McQueen's Autumn/Winter 1997 collection It's a Jungle Out There. The coiled corset was the largest thing Leane, a goldsmith who normally worked at a much smaller scale, had made up to that point. Each of the more than 90 aluminium coils that went into the corset were individually forged and fitted to the body cast for a precise shape.