During her 27 year tenure at Alexander McQueen, Sarah Burton was dedicated to preserving Lee McQueen’s unique vision and legacy and charting a clear path for its future.

In her final collection, she distilled the brand’s uncompromising vision with a cohesive body of work that paid homage to McQueen's status as the enfant terribles of the fashion circuit.

Burton and her team employed plenty of the house’s familiar codes: the use of Victorian filigree patterns, floral motifs, surface embellishment and the ever-precise tailoring that has touches of couture glamour. The first quarter of the collection echoed the silhouettes that once empowered a spirited 26-year-old McQueen to approach the head of the master’s degree course at Central Saint Martin’s, offering his services as a tutor.

Sharp, exaggerated shoulders and nipped-in waists were best showcased in looks five and six. These gave way to later looks where jacket fronts were cut away to reveal shaped leather armour. While Burton name-checked Elizabeth I and artist Magdalena Abakanowicz as references, these structural qualities lend comparisons to Boudicca or Joan of Arc—who McQueen muse, Isabella Blow, famously dressed as (complete with a trailing pewter train) to attend a dinner with Karl Lagerfeld.  It is these mythic narratives that drive the female-centric ideals that have always been at the core of Burton's aesthetic.

The central part of the collection features traced embellishments. These were first introduced as splices of vermillion across a jacket and then as whole garments covered in a surface treatment. In one dress that mines the macabre, an anatomical drawing is replicated in fringing. Flocked, stamped filigree patterns emerge as body suits and down the front of a jacket and dress.

Naomi Campbell brought the runway to a close, dressed in a silver corset-style tunic with a skirt that moved in the form of looped fringing. As Campbell walked the runway, she shed a tear for what was a poignantly romantic end to Burton’s deft guidance and unwavering vision.