Angels and Demons is the thirty-sixth and final collection by British fashion designer Alexander McQueen, released for the Autumn/Winter 2010 season of his eponymous fashion house. Aesthetically, the collection drew on religious paintings of the afterlife from the Medieval and Renaissance periods, as well as the imperial dress and art of the Byzantine Empire. It incorporated traditional tailoring and dressmaking techniques that McQueen had learned early in his career while also featuring the sophisticated digitally engineered prints he had experimented with in the past few seasons. McQueen committed suicide before the collection was finished; his close collaborator Sarah Burton completed the sixteen outfits that had been in progress at the time of his death. The unofficial title is taken from a Twitter post McQueen made shortly before his death.

In lieu of a full-scale runway show, the Alexander McQueen brand showed the sixteen completed looks privately in a series of presentations to small groups of guests on 9 and 10 March 2010, at the Hôtel de Clermont-Tonnerre in Paris. The staging was deliberately kept simple, making no attempt to emulate McQueen's bent for showmanship. Polina Kasina, McQueen's longtime fit model, wore the collection's final and best-known ensemble, a gold feathered coat over white tulle skirt. The presentations closed with the whispered words "There is no more"; the models did not return for the traditional final walk.

Critical reception for the clothing was positive. Many reviewers noted the uncanny feeling evoked by the religious theme when juxtaposed with McQueen's suicide. Retrospective analysis has focused on the theme, with particular attention paid to whether it was indicative of McQueen's mental state. Ensembles from Angels and Demons are held by several museums and have appeared in exhibitions such as the McQueen retrospective Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty.

Background British fashion designer Alexander McQueen was known for his imaginative, sometimes controversial designs, and dramatic fashion shows. 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. He learned tailoring as an apprentice on Savile Row, and dressmaking as head designer at French fashion house Givenchy. Although he worked in ready-to-wear – clothing produced for retail sale – his showpiece designs featured a degree of craftsmanship that verged on haute couture.

McQueen's life had been turbulent in every sense. His upbringing was traumatic: he was a victim of childhood sexual abuse and witnessed his sisters experiencing domestic violence from their partners. McQueen felt the fashion industry was toxic and suffocating, and he was often ambivalent about continuing his career as a designer. Relentless pressure to perform contributed to his persistent depression, anxiety, and insomnia. Since the 1990s, he had abused alcohol and drugs to varying degrees to cope. In 2007, his estranged friend Isabella Blow, who had been a formative influence, committed suicide; McQueen was devastated. In the following years, his addictions escalated and he grew obsessed with death.

On 2 February 2010, McQueen's mother died aged seventy-five. He had been close with her all his life and was distraught at the thought of having to attend her funeral, which was scheduled for 12 February. In his grief, he isolated himself and turned to drugs and alcohol. He spent the next several days making gestures that have been taken in retrospect as him setting his affairs in order, such as giving away possessions and telling people he loved them. Some time after 3am on 11 February, he committed suicide; his body was discovered later that morning.

Concept and creative process

Angels and Demons (Autumn/Winter 2010) is the thirty-sixth and final collection McQueen made for his eponymous fashion house. At the time of McQueen's suicide, the collection was unfinished; the sixteen outfits he had been working on were in various stages of completion. A complete collection was normally at least thirty. Sarah Burton, McQueen's head of womenswear and right-hand woman, completed the existing items with his team. The unofficial title Angels and Demons is taken from a Twitter post McQueen made on 7 February.

Visually, the collection relied heavily on religious paintings of the afterlife from the Medieval and Renaissance periods, as well as the imperial dress and art of the Byzantine Empire. McQueen felt the clothing in these paintings was depicted with a particular type of luminosity, and he sought to replicate that in his designs. According to Burton, he was "looking at the art of the Dark Ages but finding light and beauty in it". He had incorporated paintings into his work before; It's a Jungle Out There (Autumn/Winter 1997) had featured prints with details taken from the paintings of Flemish and Dutch Old Masters.

McQueen's previous three collections had been focused on technological innovations. Natural Dis-tinction Un-natural Selection (Spring/Summer 2009), The Horn of Plenty (Autumn/Winter 2009), and Plato's Atlantis (Spring/Summer 2010) all made use of sophisticated digitally engineered prints, and Plato's was the first livestreamed fashion show. For Angels and Demons, McQueen intended to shift his focus to handicrafts, which he felt was disappearing from the fashion industry and broader culture. Many designs featured traditional techniques for pleating, embroidery, and tailoring. Despite the emphasis on tradition, McQueen continued his experiments with digital printing with Angels and Demons, creating what Burton later described as a "juxtaposition of the old and the new". Entire paintings or selected details were rendered digitally, then either printed onto or woven into fabric. The resulting textiles were then engineered into garments.

In many ways, the collection encapsulated McQueen's entire career, incorporating the tailoring and dressmaking techniques he had learned early on, as well as his tendency to experiment with shape and style. The finished collection featured elaborate showpiece designs in a palette of gold and red, with rich fabrics like brocade and silk. Shorter dresses were followed with long draped gowns. Some patterns were made to evoke the look of marble. Embroidery of tigers and lions on some items may have been drawn from traditional Tibetan art or from Byzantine culture. The shoes were elaborately sculpted with motifs including ivy, skulls, and wings, possibly referencing the intricate sculptural work of seventeenth-century master woodcarver Grinling Gibbons. McQueen had previously drawn on Gibbons's work in No. 13 (Spring/Summer 1999), which featured a pair of intricately carved wooden prosthetic legs.

Angels and Demons heavily relied on avian imagery, with prints of wings and birds, as well as garments embellished with gilded feathers. McQueen loved birds and had used these motifs throughout his career. In this collection, appearing alongside prints of winged angels, they took on a double meaning that reinforced the religious theme.

Individual ensembles

The first look is a long-sleeved red bodice with heavy gold embroidery, with a short pleated skirt in red satin. Look 2 is a similar style with a black and gold pattern on the sleeves paired with a black pleated skirt. The bodice of this look is printed with details portraying Hell and demons from three separate paintings by Early Netherlandish painting painter Hieronymus Bosch: The Last Judgment ( or later), The Garden of Earthly Delights (), and The Temptation of St Anthony ( or later). Author Kristin Knox considered the use of these images on the garment to be an "unsettling rumination on the afterlife" on McQueen's part. Fashion theorist Kirstin Kennedy felt that the prints reinforced the collection's religious themes with an oblique humour. She noted that on the rear of the garment, a hellish bagpipe from The Last Judgement is positioned "at the base of the bodice, immediately above the wearer's anus".

Look 3 is a short dress in a black and gold brocade with puffs of red satin at the shoulders and hips, paired on the runway with black leather thigh-high boots. Look 4 is a belted gold brocade minidress with an asymmetrically pleated hem, worn with a statement choker and matching oversized bracelets in what appeared to be stained glass. Look 5 is a gold-toned minidress with matching glove, both printed with details from Adoration of the Magi Altarpiece () by German Renaissance painter Stefan Lochner. The slightly asymmetrical hem reveals an underskirt of gold-painted duck feathers. On the runway, the look was paired with gold high heels embellished with beads and gemstones.

Look 6 comprises a short kimono-style coat in red silk with flared sleeves, printed with tigers. On the runway, it was belted at the waist and worn over a gold mesh shirt and black thigh-high boots with gold soles. Bente Kiilerich thought it may have been inspired by the royal mantle of Roger II of Sicily. Look 7 is a tailored pantsuit in gold brocade patterned with angels. The top had an experimental puffed silhouette. Look 8 is a short coatdress and matching cape in black with gold Asian-inspired embroidery. Look 9 is a frock coat and matching skirt in black with gold printing.

Looks 10 through 12 are long gowns in pale grey with monochrome prints. Looks 10 and 11 feature details taken from the Portinari Altarpiece () by Hugo van der Goes. Look 10 has a double print of the archangel Gabriel mirrored on the front of the dress, with the angel's wings wrapping around to the back, where loose folds of fabric also evoke wings. Curator Andrew Bolton found the doubling reminiscent of the closed panels of an altarpiece. The print on Look 11 is a detail of Mary, the mother of Jesus. Look 12 has a chiffon skirt under a tailored bodice with beaded embellishment on the chest and angel wings printed on the back.

Look 13 is a white full-length dress with vertically ruched fabric down the centre, with gold embroidery on either side. Look 14 is a full-length red gown with cape, both in cardinal red and hand-embellished with embroidery and gold sequins, evoking the elaborate garments worn by Byzantine empresses. Judith Watt felt the rich embellishments on Look 14 echoed the "magic" of the Fall/Winter 1990 collection by Romeo Gigli, with whom McQueen had worked before founding his own company. Look 15 has a black long-sleeved bodice with heavy embellishment and embroidery all over, with a long black pleated skirt.

The best-known look from the collection is the last, Look 16, a tailored long coat with high ruff collar. The entire coat is made from gilded feathers, and it is worn over a white tulle skirt with gold hem embroidery. Andrew Wilson felt it drew on Gibbons as well as Icarus, a figure from Greek mythology who is said to have flown too close to the sun. Knox suggested the feathers and bird imagery reflected "a sort of immortal finality". The ensemble may have been a reference to the gold and white palette of McQueen's first haute couture collection for Givenchy, The Search for the Golden Fleece (Spring/Summer 1997).

Runway show