Voss (collection)

Alexander McQueen, Spring/Summer 2001, London, September 2000 McQueen turned the audience into part of the set. Guests faced an enormous clinical glass box walled with surveillance mirrors and spent the wait staring at their own reflections to the pulse of a heartbeat. When the light inside the box rose, the mirrors gave way to a white-tiled cell built to resemble a psychiatric ward, with models trapped inside who could not see the audience. The finale recreated Joel-Peter Witkin's photograph Sanitarium, revealing writer Michelle Olley reclining on a horned chaise longue as moths fluttered around her. Few shows have used a single reveal so well, and it is the one to study for how lighting alone can turn a mirror into a window.