Alexander McQueen's last collection

For fifteen minutes today, in a grand Paris drawing room with soaring white ceilings gloriously flounced with gilt, Alexander McQueen came back to life. Photograph: Catwalking.com Photograph: guardian.co.uk Sixteen unfinished looks were completed by McQueen's design team after his death, and seen for the first time in a small presentation. The collection was truly spectacular; the mood, in the face of devastating evidence of what the fashion world has lost, was bleak. Photograph: Catwalking.com Photograph: guardian.co.uk When the first model walked into the room, there was an audible intake of breath, for it was as if McQueen himself was back. Photograph: Catwalking.com Photograph: guardian.co.uk His spirit was right there, in the skullcap of bandages dissected by a mohican of lacquered feathers ... Photograph: Catwalking.com Photograph: guardian.co.uk ... in the fierce black boots with gold angels sculpted into the heels ... Photograph: Catwalking.com Photograph: guardian.co.uk ... in the muscular power of the tight crimson bodice ... Photograph: Catwalking.com Photograph: guardian.co.uk ... and the way the pleated and ruffled skirt appeared to have come not from the past or the future but from some other dimension where the two meet. Photograph: Catwalking.com Photograph: guardian.co.uk In folds of double duchesse satin, in a short dress tightly waisted and extravagantly swagged at the hip, could be glimpsed the infant Jesus from Jean Fouquet's 1450 painting of the Virgin and Child, digitally captured and engineered to fit the piece. Photograph: Catwalking.com Photograph: guardian.co.uk A pale silk chiffon gown, curves as sculpted as a Greek marble goddess yet so gossamer light it swept the floor in silence, bore the faces of angels and the wings of doves, and on the back the outline of angel wings. Photograph: Catwalking.com Photograph: guardian.co.uk A coat tailored from lacquered gold feathers was probably a nod to Grinling Gibbons, whose lifelike carvings of feathered birds have long been much marvelled at. Photograph: Catwalking.com Photograph: guardian.co.uk A red cape cut away to reveal the flowing, Madonna-esque robe beneath seemed to echo how, in Botticelli's Cestello Annunciation, Mary is pushing open her virgin-blue cape with her arm to reveal a red dress beneath. Photograph: Catwalking.com Photograph: guardian.co.uk