Once Upon a Dwam

The Shetland Islands are a formidable place: perched at the very top of Great Britain, the land is austere and windswept, dangerously beautiful, full of what feels like magic and mystery. It’s a fitting setting for Alexander McQueen—a brand of equally fierce and daring glamor—to celebrate their Fall/Winter ‘16 collection. In “Into a Dwam,” an exclusive short film directed by Jamie Hawkesworth and starring Mica Arganaraz, the landscape is as much a force of beauty as the clothes (or the people wearing them).

Hawkesworth is a celebrated British photographer whose work often straddles the line between documentary and fiction. His Preston Bus Station series captured the idiosyncratic visitors at the English bus station and was, in its own strange way, mesmerizing. Elements of everyday surrealism return in this film for McQueen. (Dwam, for example, is a Scottish term for daydream.) A young girl is first seen playing in a broken down car, and a voice intones, “I just fall into a dwam.” Dreamy images of empty meadows, the ocean, and a road at night flash across the screen. At the film’s end, four young women (three of whom are siblings in real life) march across a field—towards what, we’re not sure.

FOR MORE ON ALEXANDER MCQUEEN’S FALL/WINTER 2016 COLLECTION AND CAMPAIGN, VISIT THE LABEL’S WEBSITE.