Alexander McQueen's A/W 20 Campaign Draws on Welsh Heritage

The genesis for the A/W 20 McQueen collection occurred when creative director Sarah Burton took a trip to Wales pre-lockdown, where she sought inspiration at the St. Fagans National Museum of History in Cardiff. After fixating on the Wrexham Tailor’s Quilt, a mammoth textile alluding to the Bible and the Industrial Revolution and fashioned over a ten year period (from 1842-52), quilting and patchwork became the basis of Burton's collection.

This collection has now been re-animated in a campaign shot by British photographer Jamie Hawkesworth and art directed by M/M (Paris). Featuring models Anok Yai, Sora Choi and Jill Kortleve lensed in rural locations as the sun sets, the pictorial tropes of Northern England that Hawkesworth has become known for appear as backdrop; transmission towers, rusting barns, railway carriages and power station stacks all appear in stark contrast to the refined elegance of the models.

Jamie Hawkesworth appeared in Lou Stoppard's North project in 2015, and was later interviewed in 2017 for SHOWstudio's In Fashion series.

But Hawkesworth's subject matter is not limited entirely to the North. The photographer's last ad campaign for Alexander McQueen saw him take up residence in England’s craggy southwestern tip, with models Imaan Hammam, Felice Noordhoff and Vivien Solari holed up in a studio on the beachfront of St Ives in Cornwall.