The Horn of Plenty: Everything But the Kitchen Sink is the thirty-fourth collection by British fashion designer Alexander McQueen, released for the Autumn/Winter 2009 season of his eponymous fashion house. The collection combined the aesthetics of classic haute couture fashion with household rubbish to satirise the fashion industry for its wastefulness and lack of originality. The Horn of Plenty also featured reimagined designs and reworked items from McQueen's previous collections, serving as a retrospective of his own design history. Common design flourishes included houndstooth patterns, design elements overdone to ironic proportions, and prints based on the natural world. Production was shadowed by photographer Nick Waplington, who published a photo book documenting the collection's creation in 2013.

Forty-five looks were presented at the collection's runway show, which was staged on 10 March 2009 at the Palais Omnisports de Paris-Bercy in Paris. The centrepiece of the set was a large pile of props from previous McQueen shows, painted black. The models were styled with exaggerated lipstick, headpieces made from everyday refuse like aluminium cans, and extreme platform heels based on historical styles. On the runway, they struck poses that called back to the stylised body language in silent films and mid-century fashion photography.

Contemporary critical response was mixed, with some feeling the styling of the collection was misogynistic, while others appreciated the showmanship and references to fashion history. The Horn of Plenty is better regarded by retrospective reviewers, and it is often cited as one of McQueen's most memorable collections. Academic analysis has focused on the underlying commentary and themes, particularly the ideas evoked by the pair of fully-feathered dresses that closed the collection. Ensembles from The Horn of Plenty are held by various museums and have appeared in exhibitions such as the McQueen retrospective Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty.

British fashion designer Alexander McQueen was known for his imaginative, sometimes controversial designs, and dramatic fashion shows.^[1][2] During his nearly twenty-year career as a designer, he explored a broad range of ideas and themes, including historicism, romanticism, femininity, sexuality, and death.^[1][2][3] He began as an apprentice on Savile Row, earning a reputation as an expert tailor, then launched his eponymous fashion house shortly after graduating with his master's degree in fashion design in 1992.^[4][5] From 1996 to October 2001, McQueen was – in addition to his responsibilities for his own label – head designer at French fashion house Givenchy, replacing John Galliano.^[4][6][7] He was unhappy at Givenchy because of creative differences between him and the label. In December 2000, McQueen sold 51 percent of his company to Italian fashion house Gucci, retaining creative control.^[8][9][10]

McQueen had a difficult relationship with the fashion industry. The extreme styling in his first collections resulted in media accusations of misogyny; despite his objections, the label persisted through much of his career.^[11][12][13] McQueen was often ambivalent about continuing to work in fashion, which he described as toxic and suffocating.^[14][15][16] By the mid to late 2000s, he had reached a point of exhaustion, at one point saying, "I go in, I do my business, do the parties, and leave."^[17][18] He told a friend he regretted signing his contract with Gucci, but feared putting his employees out of work if he stepped down from his brand.^[19]

Several of McQueen's collections served as critiques of the industry.^[20] It's a Jungle Out There (Autumn/Winter 1997) used the short lifespan of the Thomson's gazelle as a metaphor for the "fragility of a designer's time in the press."^[21][22] Voss (Spring/Summer 2001) and What A Merry-Go-Round (Autumn/Winter 2001) used imagery associated with insane asylums and circuses to portray the fashion industry as chaotic and deranged.^[23][24][25] The program notes for Natural Dis-tinction Un-natural Selection (Spring/Summer 2009) explained that McQueen was concerned about how industrialisation and consumerism were damaging the natural world.^[26] By the time he staged The Horn of Plenty, McQueen was more disillusioned with fashion than ever, particularly in light of the 2007–2008 financial crisis that had devastated the global economy.^[27][28] He was critical of the way the rapid turnover of the fashion cycle relied on consumerism and over-consumption to turn a profit, creating unnecessary waste and exhausting designers.^[27][29][30]

Birds, wings, and feathers were a recurring theme in McQueen's work.^[31][32] His fifth collection, The Birds (Spring/Summer 1995), was inspired by ornithology, the study of birds, and named for the 1963 Alfred Hitchcock film The Birds.^[33][34] Several garments from this collection were printed with silhouettes of swallows in flight.^[35][36] The stage of his thirty-first collection, La Dame Bleue (Spring/Summer 2008), was illuminated by giant blue neon wings.^[37][38][39] Other collections with heavy avian elements included Voss, Irere (Spring/Summer 2003), and The Widows of Culloden (Autumn/Winter 2006).^[40][41][42]

Look 29, featuring a reworked print from The Birds (Spring/Summer 1995)^[27]

Jacket with swallow print from Look 33 of The Birds, as presented at Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2024

The Horn of Plenty: Everything But the Kitchen Sink (Autumn/Winter 2009), generally referred to as The Horn of Plenty, is the thirty-fourth collection McQueen made for his eponymous fashion house.^[43] It was conceived as a dark satire of the fashion industry with pastiches of notable designers and McQueen's past works.^[27][44] He felt the industry was reliant on reusing old ideas rather than coming up with new concepts, and would be even more risk-averse during a recession.^[45][30][46] McQueen felt sales would be poor regardless as a result of the declining economy, so he intended to attract attention by rejecting the safe approach and making a statement.^[45] He jokingly described the collection to journalist Susannah Frankel as "a sackable offense".^[28]

McQueen, 39 years old at the time the collection was conceived, viewed The Horn of Plenty as the last he would make as a young man, and sought to create a retrospective of his career to that point.^[47] Accordingly, many details, including the set decoration and soundtrack, referred back to previous collections.^[27][48] The title was taken from the name of a pub associated with the final victim of Jack the Ripper, calling back to McQueen's first collection, Jack the Ripper Stalks His Victims (1992).^[30][49] Many designs were revisions of earlier ideas, while other items, like a chainmail yashmak, were archival pieces taken from previous collections, often heavily restructured.^[27][50] Archival bottoms were reworked into tops, trousers into sleeves, and dresses into coats.^[51][44] A hat from one of McQueen's Givenchy shows was reconstructed in reverse.^[52]

New Look "Bar Suit" by Christian Dior, 1947

Blue tweed suit by Coco Chanel, 1955

Little black dress by Hubert de Givenchy, 1961

Inspiration from other designers was wide-ranging.^[19] McQueen drew extensively on the fashion of the 1950s for the collection, particularly the hourglass silhouette popular at the time. He made visual allusions to the New Look created by designer Christian Dior, the tweed suits that Coco Chanel was known for, and the little black dress popularised by Hubert de Givenchy.^[11][32][50] There were possible references to later designers as well: the wrap dresses of Yves Saint Laurent, the unusual silhouettes of Cristóbal Balenciaga, a knitted dress with embellishments that suggested the medusa logo of Versace, and a 1990s dress from Comme des Garçons.^[53][30][54]

McQueen's concerns about wastefulness and consumerism were reflected in designs that appeared to be made of trash, such as coats that looked like bin bags or bubble wrap.^[44][50] These items were made from expensive non-renewable specialist materials such as paper nylon and lacquered silk; McQueen described the use of such materials as an additional layer of irony.^[43][28][55] Visual inspiration for the trash-as-couture aesthetic was a 2007 portrait by Hendrik Kerstens. It features the artist's daughter wearing a white plastic bag as a wimple, referencing the work of 17th century painter Johannes Vermeer.^[56][19]

McQueen may also have been referencing the so-called "hobo couture" collection by John Galliano for Dior.^[11] Presented in Spring/Summer 2000, Galliano's collection featured clothing made from rubbish like old newspapers and models styled to look homeless, resulting in significant controversy.^[57] McQueen and Galliano's careers overlapped, and they were frequently compared in the press because of their similarly theatrical styles.^[58][59][60] McQueen, who had a competitive streak, resented the comparison and often sought to emulate or outdo Galliano's ideas in his own work.^[61][62]

A cinemaphile, McQueen was known for drawing on his favourite films for inspiration.^[63] He told Women's Wear Daily he was referencing the documentary films Paris Is Burning (1990) and The Cockettes (2002), which concern ball culture and avant-garde theatre, respectively.^[45]

The palette was mainly black and white, with strong accents of bright red and orange.^[50][43] Primary silhouettes included McQueen staples like tailored coats, slim waists, and large shoulders, as well as boxy jackets, a shape he rarely used; conversely, he avoided his usual corset-based designs.^[45][50][31] Design elements like bustles and ruffles were overdone to the point of parody.^[64][44] The collection prominently featured patterns, including harlequin diamonds, houndstooth, and Prince of Wales check.^[65][43][50] The harlequin diamonds called back to the circus theme of What a Merry-Go-Round.^[66] The use of houndstooth, a reference to Dior's New Look, was especially exaggerated – some ensembles had multiple items in different sizes of the pattern.^[67][68] Look 6 had a fur coat rendered in a large houndstooth.^[69]

Despite the theme of trash and waste, the collection heavily references the natural world with animal prints and real furs.^[70][71] The use of red and orange against black was a reference to animals with warning colours.^[45] There was a strong emphasis on avian elements, including feather prints, a birdcage hat, and garments made from actual feathers.^[42] A print of swallows that had appeared on several garments from The Birds was reworked for The Horn of Plenty. The new version featured a houndstooth pattern that, through tessellation, transformed into magpies, referencing the mathematically inspired art of Dutch graphic artist M. C. Escher just as the original collection had.^[27][72]

Accessories were made from repurposed everyday items, or were made to look like them.^[43] Miliner Philip Treacy made hats from lampshades and umbrellas, among other things.^[43][73] Hairstylist Guido Palau made headpieces from aluminium cans sprayed black and wrapped in plastic.^[a][43][75] McQueen had experimented with extreme footwear for previous collections. Three seasons prior, his collection La Dame Bleue had included high platform shoes inspired by the Japanese geta and the Venetian chopine of the 15th century.^[76] He brought these ideas into The Horn of Plenty, which featured platform boots in houndstooth and red geta-style heels with a thin strap like a Mary Jane shoe.^[77][78] Georgina Goodman was responsible for shoe design for The Horn of Plenty.^[79]

In 2008, McQueen asked his friend Nick Waplington, a photographer, if he would be interested in collaborating on a photo book documenting the creation of The Horn of Plenty from beginning to end.^[28] Although he was interested, Waplington was living and working in Jerusalem and wanted to put off McQueen's project for several years while he finished his work there.^[b][47] McQueen insisted that it had to be that collection at that time. Waplington realised that McQueen saw the collection as a unique turning point for his career, and agreed to take on the project.^[47][81] McQueen also asked his journalist friend Susannah Frankel to participate.^[28] McQueen was generally private to the point of deliberate obtuseness; both Frankel and Waplington considered the project an opportunity to glean an unusual amount of insight into his mind and creative process.^[28][82]

Work on the collection took approximately six months, during which Waplington shadowed McQueen and his team closely. The majority of production was concentrated into the final five weeks, beginning in February 2009 with preliminary work at McQueen's London workshop, a final week of polishing in Paris, and ending with the runway show there.^[28] McQueen was an unusually hands-on designer. Rather than direct the process from above, he personally cut, pinned, and often sewed parts of the pattern for each runway piece.^[83][51] The majority of the production team had worked with McQueen for years. Frankel described them as working on The Horn of Plenty with a degree of commitment she considered "unprecedented"; they were exhausted by the time they reached Paris.^[51]

Waplington took approximately 700 to 800 photographs during his time with McQueen, deliberately staying in the background so as to not interfere.^[81] Once the show had concluded, McQueen and Waplington selected about 300 photographs that McQueen arranged for the final book.^[84] During the editing process, the pair added photos of landfills and recycling plants, juxtaposed with those of the collection to reinforce McQueen's point about environmental destruction.^[85][55] Although the book was completed by late 2009, minor issues with the publisher delayed their signing a contract until after the Christmas holidays that year, and in February 2010, McQueen committed suicide. In the immediate aftermath, Waplington received a number of offers to publish the book, but the Alexander McQueen brand asked Waplington to wait; he agreed, not wanting to go ahead "without their blessing".^[81] The book was published in 2013 as Alexander McQueen: Working Process.^[81] The Tate Britain held an exhibition of the photographs in 2015.^[86]

The runway show was staged on 10 March 2009 at the Palais Omnisports de Paris-Bercy in Paris during Paris Fashion Week.^[87] The show was dedicated to McQueen's mother.^[44] The invitation featured the photograph which had inspired the collection, a portrait of a woman wearing a white plastic bag as a wimple.^[56]

McQueen worked with a consistent creative team for his shows.^[51] Overall styling was handled by Camilla Nickerson, while Gainsbury & Whiting oversaw production.^[87] Joseph Bennett, who had designed all of McQueen's runways since No. 13 (Spring/Summer 1999), returned for set design.^[88][89] Hair was styled by Guido Palau, make-up by Peter Philips.^[87]

The runway was made of cracked, mirror-like black glass, which author Dana Thomas took as "a swipe at fashion's self-obsession", and curator Kate Bethune thought was an allusion to the shattered economy.^[50][30][44] The centrepiece of the set was a large pile of props from McQueen's past shows, all painted black.^[50] There were horses from the carousel in What a Merry-Go-Round, the chandelier from Sarabande (Spring/Summer 2007), and a branch from the tree at the centre of The Girl Who Lived in the Tree (Autumn/Winter 2008).^[43][90][51] There was also, in a nod to the collection's subtitle, a kitchen sink.^[44]

Models were styled with stark white face makeup, bleached eyebrows, and exaggerated, overdrawn lips in red or black; the colours used mirrored those used for the garments.^[43][91][92] McQueen originally asked for a look that emphasized the eyes, but Philips created a lip-centric look, drawing on McQueen's ideas as well as his own. The white face came from the makeup of the Elizabethan era, while the dark overdrawn lips were taken from clown makeup and actress Joan Crawford.^[93][75] There was also an influence from the absurdist Terry Gilliam film Brazil (1985).^[11][45] Some reviewers have identified the makeup style as a reference to avant-garde performance artist Leigh Bowery, whom McQueen knew and admired.^[27][19][93] Others took it as a jab at the kind of extreme distortions in appearance that can be created by cosmetic procedures like filler injections or plastic surgery.^[94][56] Still others suggested a resemblance to the exaggerated features of sex dolls.^[95]

McQueen additionally wanted to draw on "Eliza Doolittle at the flower market before she transforms in [the 1964 film] My Fair Lady". Palau's hairstyling wound up accounting for this. He concealed the models' hair within head wraps, then added arrangements of aluminium cans wrapped in plastic, creating what Philips called a "dirty, early morning flower market" look.^[75] Hairstyling and hats were unique to each model and look.^[84]

The poses and gestures the models made while walking called back to the stylised body language in silent films and mid-century fashion photography.^[11][96] Some models found it difficult to walk in the extremely high heels that accompanied most outfits.^[56] Polina Kasina told fashion theorist Caroline Evans, with some amusement, that they were "easy to walk in", but frightening nonetheless, because "you never know" what might happen on the runway.^[97] Kate Bethune perceived a strong Gothic influence to the runway show, with styling that "teetered on the precipice between the grotesque and the farcical".^[44]

Forty-five looks were presented across roughly three phases. The first fourteen looks were primarily based around houndstooth and check patterns in black and white.^[99][100] For Look 5, model Amanda Laine wore a houndstooth "New Look" dress accessorised with a metal coiled collar originally used in It's a Jungle Out There, created as a visual reference to the neck rings traditionally worn by the Southern Ndebele people of Africa.^[69][101] The hem of her dress is coated in a black material that appears like tar, and on close inspection, actually depicts a silhouette of a scene.^[102] Look 8 features the same style of pheasant claw earrings that Leane had developed for Look 14 of Dante (Autumn/Winter 1996).^{[50][103][104]}

Looks 15 through 38, the largest part of the collection, mostly comprised ensembles in black, with some red-based outfits as well.^[105] Look 33 comprises a hat and coat of black fur, worn with a black leather belt.^[106] According to Jonathan Faiers, the ensemble is dyed goat fur, although it is often said to be monkey fur. He identifies its origins in the experimental monkey fur garments designed by Elsa Schiaparelli in the 1930s, as well as in a coat made of human hair from McQueen's Eshu (Spring/Summer 2000). For Faiers, it "represents McQueen's ability to combine the natural world [...] with references to fashion history itself".^[71]

The final seven ensembles were all showpiece dresses. Looks 39 through 42 had patterns with a base of red.^[105] Faiers identified Look 40, a red and black feathered dress, as a reference to a pheasant-feather dress from The Widows of Culloden.^[107] Look 42 featured a reworked version of a chainmail yashmak by Leane originally made for Eye (Spring/Summer 2000), worn underneath a silk gown with a milk snake print in red, black, and white.^[108][50] Look 43 was a one-shoulder black mermaid gown in nylon made to look like a bin bag, styled with a floor-length shawl made to appear like black bubble wrap.^[105]

The final two looks were a pair of knee-length dresses covered in duck feathers; these were inspired by the White Swan and Black Swan characters from the Matthew Bourne interpretation of Swan Lake, respectively.^[105][45] Look 44, in white, alluded to the demure White Swan with an exaggerated cowl surrounding the model's upper body and head. The final showpiece, in black, referenced the more aggressive Black Swan character.^[105][50] The dress has a small waist and large shoulders; this is primarily an exaggeration of the typical 1950s silhouette, but also resembles the puffy leg-of-mutton sleeves common in the 1890s.^[32][107]

Like Voss and Pantheon ad Lucem (Autumn/Winter 2004), the show closed with the sound of a flatlining heart monitor.^[109] After taking his bows to a rowdy standing ovation, McQueen departed immediately for his hotel room rather than meet with guests backstage, as is customary in the fashion industry.^[112] He had been avoiding these after-show meetings for several years by this point.^[56]

Reception to The Horn of Plenty was somewhat divided. Some found the trash-centred theme, extreme heels, and exaggerated makeup misogynistic, while others appreciated the showmanship and references to classic haute couture.^{[105][11][50]} Audience reactions were varied, despite the standing ovation.^[113] Sarah Mower from Vogue described "heated arguments" breaking out after the show.^[50] Eric Wilson of The New York Times quoted an unnamed magazine editor dismissing it as "a collection inspired by Wall-E" – a 2008 film that depicts Earth as a rubbish-strewn wasteland – but also described Dennis Freedman, creative director of W magazine, as "visibly ecstatic".^[11][114] Buyers from high-end retail stores like Bergdorf Goodman and Holt Renfrew were enthusiastic about the commercial potential of the collection's unconventional designs.^[45]

A number of reviewers regarded The Horn of Plenty as an overall success. Miles Socha at Women's Wear Daily (WWD) called it a "full-strength, hard-core McQueen experience".^[45] Another reviewer there felt it was a daring expression of rage.^[115] Hilary Alexander at The Independent was enthused about the entire show, especially the variety of materials and attention to detail.^[94] Booth Moore, writing at the Los Angeles Times, was intrigued by McQueen being in "high-camp mode".^[116] Although broadly positive in their reviews, Suzy Menkes of the International Herald Tribune and Liz Jones of the Daily Mail had reservations about the collection.^[117][118] Menkes highlighted the oversized knitted items as highly imaginative, while Jones called it a "timely reminder" of fashion's ability to be provocative and novel.^[117][118]

Many described it as the best or most interesting collection presented at Paris Fashion Week that season.^[120] Mower called McQueen "the last designer standing who is brave or foolhardy enough" to present a collection so polarising.^[50] Laura Craik of The Evening Standard felt the inclusion of McQueen's edgy brand signatures was a reminder of his influence on the industry and a reclamation of these ideas from "watered-down" versions presented by others.^[100] Socha had similar thoughts, writing "If other designers have recently homed in on McQueen’s signature brand of power dressing, he laid down a gauntlet with his nuclear-powered dressing."^[45]

The collection's extravagant prints were a high point for reviewers, especially the varying sizes of houndstooth.^[123] Vanessa Friedman of the Financial Times was pleased with the "feral" aspect of the animal prints, and felt the collection demanded attention in a good way.^[119] The reviewer in Le Monde appreciated the juxtaposition of elegant or "bourgeois" aesthetics with discordant elements like chainmail, leather, and the rubbish-styled items.^[111] Jenny Barchfield at the Associated Press appreciated the way McQueen had pushed staple silhouettes "beyond the boundaries of politeness".^[110] Craik identified Treacy's hats and the eveningwear as her favourite parts.^[100]

Most critics responded well to the showpiece designs.^[45] Craik and Barchfield each highlighted the sculptural feathered dresses, and said that although they looked exciting to wear, deemed them more likely to appear in a museum than a wardrobe.^[100][110] For the Sunday Independent, Andrea Byrne thought the designs would be popular for magazine covers because of the sense of escapism they evoked.^[124] Mower respected McQueen's decision not to "compromise on construction and craftsmanship" for the showpieces, despite his frustration with the industry.^[50] Menkes and Jones were more reticent, describing the showpieces as closer to costume than wearable fashion, and questioning the collection's appeal for the average person.^[118] Deirdre McQuillan of The Irish Times agreed, feeling that it "became a macabre display of grotesque couture", albeit a well-crafted one.^[113]

As a satire of fashion, the collection was more divisive. Barchfield was enthusiastic, calling it "beauty transformed into ugliness and then back into beauty again".^[110] Moore appreciated McQueen "making fun of his own compulsion for extreme runway drama" while making a grand statement about fashion.^[116] At the Toronto Star, David Graham felt the show was a "disquieting" indictment of the excesses of fashion, particularly in a time of economic crisis.^[125] Wilson appreciated the "challenging" concept, but questioned whether McQueen was being hypocritical by drawing so extensively on fashion history while also dismissing it. In his opinion, the breadth of referencing meant that some elements were "lost or obscured".^[11] Several reviewers noted that the collection lacked the sense of romanticism which often balanced McQueen's aggressive side.^{[50][117][115]}

Mower wrote that the collection "didn't push fashion anywhere new", but suspected that was central to the point McQueen had been making about the industry's stagnation.^[50] Jones questioned McQueen's narrative, asking "what was the message, that fashion is a load of rubbish?"^[118] For El País, Eugenia de la Torriente appreciated the runway drama, but pointed out the irony of attacking the decadence of fashion with a collection that was itself quite extravagant.^[126]

The extreme runway styling polarised reviewers. Journalists noted that some models had difficulty walking in the restrictive, heavy dresses and high heels.^[128] Some described the make-up as clown-like or ridiculous.^{[113][129][121]} Whether these elements indicated misogyny was a topic of debate.^{[116][126][127]} McQuillan and Menkes thought it did, with Menkes additionally frowning on the overdrawn "porn star lips" as "unsavory".^[113][117] Robin Givhan at The Washington Post felt that McQueen had excluded the models from the joke by styling them this way, and had slid from attempting satire to appearing "awfully eager to use his outsize talent to help women make fools of themselves".^[127] On the other hand, Alexander thought the styling "represented the potent, passionate and powerful vision of extreme womanhood that is always McQueen’s signature".^[94] The reviewer in Le Monde felt similarly, writing that the styling helped mark the collection as modern and satirical.^[111]

A few critics wondered if McQueen was sending a message to his former employer Givenchy and sometime-rival John Galliano.^[130] Menkes thought it was a general "riposte" to Galliano's decision to forgo the runway theatrics he had become famous for.^[117] Graham and Wilson both wondered if McQueen had been making what Graham called "a pointed diss" towards Galliano's Spring/Summer 2000 "hobo couture" collection.^[11][125]

Jonathan Akeroyd, chief executive officer of the Alexander McQueen label, told the magazine in April 2009 that the collection had performed well commercially, with showpiece designs accounting for some 35% of total sales.^[45]

Retrospective commentary highlights the show's underlying theme. In her foreword to Working Process, Frankel described the collection as "satirical to the point of vicious".^[56] Bethune wrote that it was a "a powerful comment on the excesses of fashion in a modern consumer age".^[44] Alexander McQueen archivist John Matheson described The Horn of Plenty as a "defining collection" for McQueen, because the "wickedness, the romance, and the sense of humour" had come together in balance.^[131]

In 2015, Wonderland magazine picked The Horn of Plenty as one of their top seven McQueen shows, calling it "an animalistic obsession reaching its couture peak".^[132] The same year, I-D deemed it one of the defining shows of McQueen's career.^[133] A 2023 L'Officiel USA article called it one of McQueen's most iconic shows.^[134] When Vogue magazine asked various designers about their favourite shows by others, in 2024, Marine Serre picked The Horn of Plenty, calling it a "powerful visual critique of consumerism". She said that McQueen's mix of aesthetics and messaging inspired her own work.^[135] Seán McGirr, the creative director of the Alexander McQueen brand since 2024, cited The Horn of Plenty and Plato's Atlantis as having had a strong influence on him in his formative years in fashion.^[136]

Critics generally agree that the show was a successful satire of the fashion industry.^[53][137] Fashion journalist Alex Fury felt the collection exemplified McQueen's tendency to use his shows as cultural commentary.^[53] Robert McCaffrey was pleased with the two-pronged satire against "the impossible beauty standards of the fashion industry and also the disposable and deathly cycle of fashion production".^[137] Cultural theologian Robert Covolo described The Horn of Plenty as an example of how McQueen transformed the look of the human body to comment on social issues. In particular, he argued that the near-identical styling and behaviour of the models "evoked the idea of an insane repetition", reinforcing McQueen's critique of the fashion cycle as both pointless and environmentally destructive.^[138]

Timothy Campbell contrasted McQueen's work with The Horn of Plenty to the work of designer Martin Margiela, who is known for reworking old or unwanted materials, such as surplus military socks, into luxury fashion items as a protest against waste in the fashion industry.^[139] He described several elements of The Horn of Plenty as an "inversion" of Margiela's reclamations. Campbell argued that the pile of black-painted props represented McQueen discarding rather than reusing them, and that McQueen's use of luxury fabrics to replicate trash was the opposite of Margiela's use of old materials for high-end fashion. Campbell concluded that McQueen's argument is "the same position [as Margiela's] from the opposite side"; that is, McQueen sought to make a statement about the "unsustainable material waste" produced by the fashion industry, while also demonstrating that it was possible for the industry to contemplate reuse of discarded things.^[140]

The duck-feathered finale dresses have attracted commentary about their meaning and symbolism. Jonathan Faiers analysed them as a pair, arguing that they evoked the idea of a flock of birds rather than being an attempt at "straightforward bird mimicry".^[42] He considered the white dress "more remarkable" than its black counterpart, writing that it "cocoon[ed] and disabl[ed] its wearer", turning her into a living symbol of "hatching and rebirth".^[107] Many have noted the resemblance of the black dress to the plumage of a raven; these birds are often depicted in culture as symbols of death.^{[32][141][142]} Theorist Mélissa Diaby Savané wrote that the use of raven symbolism was an example how McQueen created garments that he felt were empowering for the wearer, enabling them to "inspire fear in others".^[141] Faiers argued that the dress combined multiple visual references from religion, cinema, and fashion history into a "scrambled feathered hybrid".^[107]

Alessandro Bucci analysed the black finale dress in an in-depth object study. Bucci argued that the dress presented a metamorphosis from human to animal that was frozen at the point of being almost complete. On the runway, the model became "a sinister ebony creature full of thoughts, of energy and sensuality [...] a raven, a romantic and melancholic symbol of death".^[142] He noted that this was not unusual for McQueen, who had presented metamorphic designs in many previous collections.^[142] While many critics have defined this tendency as being in the Romantic tradition, Bucci instead identified the black feathered dress, and The Horn of Plenty in general, as Surrealist in nature, with its "juxtaposition of mutually unrelated objects".^[143] For Bucci, the finale dress was a Surrealist version of Dior's New Look, with its parodically-exaggerated hourglass silhouette contrasted with its avian features.^[144] He interpreted it as McQueen pressing for change: both in the personal sense of helping women change into empowered beings with his designs, but also in the general sense of seeking a "renovation of the fashion industry".^[145] He concluded his analysis by calling the dress an example of how McQueen blurred the boundaries between fashion and art with his showpiece designs.^[146]

Janice Miller examined the exaggerated makeup from The Horn of Plenty, pointing out the sexual symbolism of the enormous red lips. Psychoanalysts such as Sigmund Freud and Karl Abraham popularised the notion that there is "a symbolic relationship between mouths and vaginas in human libidinal development", and in popular culture, this is sometimes taken to mean that red lipstick is "designed to mimic female genitalia". In The Horn of Plenty, the exaggeration of the lipstick beyond the natural lip line, and the use of unnatural colours, "creates a cavernous orifice that is both fetish object and threat", to the point of evoking the folk story of the vagina dentata – a toothed vagina with the power to castrate. For her, it was an example of how McQueen "confronted his audience with common fantasies and fears about women and female sexuality".^[93]

Fashion theorist Jonathan Faiers described The Horn of Plenty as a preparatory step toward McQueen's next – and final – collection Plato's Atlantis (Spring/Summer 2010). He likened McQueen to an insect going through metamorphosis or a snake shedding its skin, reinventing himself and discarding each previous phase in his creative development in order to "evolve into [his] final form". For The Horn of Plenty, this was particularly pronounced, as McQueen was not only discarding his own past, but "that of fashion history itself". McQueen distorted traditional silhouettes and design flourishes to an extreme degree, so that "they seem in danger of imminent collapse", representing his view on the industry and the economy as a whole.^[18] Faiers identifies the complex digital prints in The Horn of Plenty, based on animals, as a stepping stone to the elaborate prints of Plato's Atlantis, which Faiers viewed as McQueen's creative "apotheosis".^[147]

Some authors have commented on McQueen's use of bird motifs. Fashion historian Alistair O'Neill noted that in Greek mythology, women are often transformed into birds to escape trouble, connecting this to McQueen's desire to transform women through clothing to protect and empower them.^[148] In folklore, magpies are said to be thieves attracted to shiny things; Faiers thought the use of the magpie may have been a metaphor for fashion's own vices.^{[64][149][150]}

According to Kathryne Fontaine, a pivotal scene in the 2018 novel Mère d'invention by Clara Dupuis-Morency concerns the narrator watching a film about The Horn of Plenty. The narrator, an author, has become creatively stagnant following an abortion one year prior. Watching the film, she has a disturbing revelation in which she begins to connect the derangement and decomposition exemplified in the show with creativity. Although discomfited, she is inspired to incorporate these themes, and her experience of abortion, into her own work, renewing her creativity with an aesthetic of the grotesque.^[151]

Several looks from The Horn of Plenty have been photographed for Vogue. Mario Testino photographed an editorial featuring a houndstooth skirt suit in 2009. Pop singer Lady Gaga wore the one-shoulder black mermaid gown from Look 43 for a shoot by Josh Olins. Patrick Demarchelier and Tim Walker photographed Look 10 and Look 2, respectively.^[152]

McQueen brought ideas from Natural Dis-tinction Un-natural Selection and The Horn of Plenty into his next show, Plato's Atlantis (Spring/Summer 2010); all three made use of sophisticated digitally-engineered prints.^[153] Plato's Atlantis also continued McQueen's experiments with extreme platform shoes. That collection's showpiece armadillo shoes are almost 12 inches (30 cm) from top to sole, with a 9-inch (23 cm) spike heel.^[154][155]

In 2012, the Royal Mail released a set of stamps featuring iconic British fashion designs; the final look from The Horn of Plenty appeared on one.^[156] For her performance at the 68th Annual Grammy Awards in 2026, Lady Gaga wore Look 36, a red and black feathered bolero jacket and sculpted skirt, complete with the exploded basket-like wicker headpiece from the runway.^[157][158]

In 2017, McQueen's longtime collaborator Shaun Leane auctioned a number of pieces he had created for the house at Sotheby's in New York, including at least one from The Horn of Plenty.^[c][160] A coiled collar of silver-plated brass, originally worn on the runway for It's a Jungle Out There and reused for The Horn of Plenty, sold for $243,750.^[161] Fashion collector Jennifer Zuiker auctioned her McQueen collection in 2020, including several items from The Horn of Plenty.^[162] A red and black tunic with swallow print, Look 29 on the runway, sold for $1,875.^[163] A red and black mermaid gown with feather pattern from the retail collection and a black and white houndstooth coat from Look 7 each sold for $2,812.^[164][165] A quilted grey silk coat reminiscent of the bubble wrap coat from Look 43 sold for $5,625.^[166] Fashion dealer Steven Philip auctioned a number of archival McQueen pieces in 2023, including two from the retail collection of The Horn of Plenty.^[167] A houndstooth ensemble sold for £3,600, while a red and black blouse sold for £1,600.^[168][169]

Four ensembles from The Horn of Plenty appeared in Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty, a retrospective exhibition of McQueen's designs shown in 2011 at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (the Met) and in 2015 at the Victoria and Albert Museum (the V&A).^[32][170] Look 17, a black synthetic dress paired with a black leather corset; Look 34, a black leather jacket with fox fur sleeves paired with a black leather skirt; Look 45, the black duck dress; and the basket hat by Philip Treacy for Look 36 appeared in the original staging.^[171] Other looks were added for the 2015 staging, including the white duck feather dress.^[172]

Two items owned by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art appeared in the museum's exhibition Lee Alexander McQueen: Mind, Mythos, Muse, originally staged in 2022: Look 15, a black dress-and-blouse ensemble made to resemble a bin bag, and a copy of Look 29, the red dress with swallow print.^[173] When the National Gallery of Victoria (NGV) in Australia restaged Mind, Mythos, Muse, they added garments from their own collection: a copy of Look 29, a red dress with swallow print and black coordinating boots, and a black and white houndstooth cape from the retail collection.^{[174][175][176]}

A 2011 replica of Look 39, owned by the V&A, appeared in the 2012 exhibition British Design 1948–2012: Innovation in the Modern Age at the V&A, juxtaposed with a photograph of McQueen working on the runway original.^[177][178] Look 43 appeared in the 2013 exhibition Punk: Chaos to Couture at the Met.^[179] The Museum at FIT owns a copy of the same red and black mermaid gown sold by Zuiker, purchased in 2016. It has appeared in the exhibitions Force of Nature (2017) and Exhibitionism: 50 Years of the Museum at FIT (2019).^[180]

• Trashion, fashion created from actual trash

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• Alexander McQueen | Women's Autumn/Winter 2009 | Runway Show on YouTube
• Behind the scenes photographs by Joseph Bennett