The first time I really met Sarah Burton was when Alexander McQueen made my wedding dress. It was the spring of 2005 and I was a writer at American Vogue.
Alexander was at the height of his genius then and we had been friends since we met in the early 1990s. He had a charming studio in Islington, north London, a beautiful space in a Victorian building flooded with natural light.
He also had a brilliant team around him – including Sarah Burton, his then 30-year-old women’s fashion design director, who had joined him in 1996 as a 21-year-old intern.
It would be Sarah who would make my dress from one of Alexander’s hastily drawn designs. Little did I know that his prodigy would soon design another, much more famous wedding dress – for Kate Middleton – and forge a partnership that has become one of the strongest in fashion.
The recent news that Burton is stepping down from running McQueen, a position she has held since Alexander’s sudden death in 2010, has shocked the fashion world. Burton was so closely aligned with McQueen’s vision that it’s hard to imagine the brand without her.
Birthday beauty: Kate’s official portrait for her 40th birthday showed her wearing one of Burton’s creations
Rare talent: McQueen creative director Sarah Burton (left) with supermodel Kate Moss
She is in many ways the industry’s best-kept secret – a designer who shies away from the limelight herself but whose creations for the Princess of Wales have made headlines around the world.
For many years, Kate has relied on Burton for her large, high-profile public events. At several Bafta awards, she wore flowing chiffon McQueen evening dresses reminiscent of 1940s film stars.
She rarely wears a chic McQueen coat or suit for formal walks and meetings, and she always turns to Burton’s designs for the most important royal occasions.
For her sister Pippa’s wedding in 2017, Kate looked flawless in a dusty pink heavy silk crepe McQueen dress with oversized cuffs. To Prince Harry and Meghan’s wedding the following year, she wore a simple but immaculately tailored cream coat dress.
For Prince Louis’ christening it was an ivory V-neck dress with puff shoulders and for Trooping the Color in 2018 it was a baby blue square neck dress.
For her 40th birthday portraits, taken by legendary fashion photographer Paolo Roversi, Kate wore three McQueen dresses: a dramatic red dress with wide sleeves and pockets; a white one-shoulder dress; and a fairytale ball gown made of tulle and organza.
Both Kate and daughter Charlotte wore McQueen to King Charles’ coronation in May. There is clearly an incredible bond of trust between the princess and Sarah.
From my first fitting with her, I knew I was in talented hands. The design was a traditional corset dress. It featured a cinched waist, long skirt and intricate embroidery on the bodice, with layers of hand-gathered silk netting delicately sewn onto the dramatic train.
Groundbreaking dress: Burton repairs Kate’s train as she prepares to walk down the aisle on her wedding day in 2011
My first fitting included trying on a “toile” (a prototype that couture houses use to perfect a design). I remember Sarah as a modest young woman with transparent skin, a few freckles and dark blonde hair with long bangs that she liked to hide behind. Growing up in the Northwest, she generally wore jeans and a white shirt, always with a pincushion on her arm.
She was focused and determined to make me the perfect dress.
I remember being amazed that the toile was made from the same silk taffeta as my dress – it’s more common for toiles to be made from an inexpensive fabric in case a mistake should happen. But Sarah explained that Alexander often made toiletries out of the same material as the final piece, no matter how expensive, because that way he could be more precise.
By the time my wedding dress was finished, Sarah had made a total of nine garments over several months, made an incredible corset and commissioned the most beautiful embroidery. No doubt Kate would have gone through an even longer process for her wedding dress.
Sarah’s attention to detail was shaped from the earliest stages of her career. She tweaked, she refined, she was as excited about the wedding as I was and even commissioned a pair of silk shoes with embroidery to match the dress.
Needless to say, the finished dress was exquisite and she made sure to have a small, pale blue silk bow sewn into it so I had “something blue.”
The bill for such a dress would normally have been huge, running into tens of thousands of pounds, but Alexander made it for me at cost and took no profit.
McQueen dream: Kate in a chiffon ball gown
Over the next few years, Sarah was a constant presence at McQueen’s house. She was Alexander’s right-hand woman, but she never had any airs or grace about her. She was simply the quiet force behind the throne.
The company later moved to glamorous offices in Clerkenwell and whenever I was in London I would pay a visit, either to see Alexander or occasionally to borrow a dress for an event. Sarah was one of those people who always came out of her studio, no matter how busy they were, to say hello.
Of course we always talked about the fashion business, but also often about our children. Not only is she a highly successful career woman, but just as importantly, she is the wife of photographer David Burton and the mother of three children – ten-year-old twins and a seven-year-old.
When Alexander died suddenly in 2010, aged just 40, Burton was devastated. But there was little doubt who would succeed him, and she was named his successor almost immediately.
Still, she knew she was following in the footsteps of a genius and was (understandably) intimidated by the prospect. After she was offered the role, she told me, she called Vogue editor-in-chief Anna Wintour in a panic and asked her for advice. She said Anna simply told her, “You have to do it” – and that was the end of it.
Shortly after Burton became McQueen’s creative director, Kate Middleton commissioned her to design the dress for her 2011 wedding to Prince William.
Sarah, the soul of discretion, kept the whole thing a secret until the very last minute, although there were rumors that Kate McQueen would wear it, having apparently admired Sara Buys’ exquisite wedding dress, also designed by Burton, when she was Queen Camilla’s Son Tom married Parker Bowles in 2005.
Author Plum Sykes is pictured in a stunning Alexander McQueen dress on her own wedding day
With its cinched waist, dramatic skirt, ten-foot train, and delicate lace sleeves and shoulders, Kate’s wedding dress was a magnificent piece of work that catapulted Burton into another league.
The dress redefined the famously sharp McQueen silhouette and softened it for a new era.
From then on, Burton’s interpretation of the McQueen look was to be a softer, slightly more feminine version of what was at times too outlandish and extreme for some women.
In one of her rare interviews, Burton called her style “soft armor for women,” which very prominent women like the Princess of Wales might find quite useful as a fashion philosophy.
“You can be dominant in a quiet way,” Burton told British Vogue in 2018 about her work practices in the office and editing room.
After the royal wedding, she achieved a new level of global fame as a designer who shaped the zeitgeist. But the attention didn’t change her and, most admirably, there was no indication that she would use her relationship with Kate to promote herself.
There is no diva here; simply a woman whose talent and work speak for themselves.
From that moment on, Kate seemed thrilled with the look. But it’s not just Burton’s royal connections that impress. She has also built the McQueen brand – which was still relatively young when she took the helm – into a hugely successful business with 100 stores around the world and annual sales of £600m to £700m.
Since 2010, Burton has produced two stunning collections every year. She’s able to make everything from dresses, suits, evening dresses and jeans to shoes, handbags, jewelry and sunglasses, all with that cool, desirable McQueen look – the sharp shoulders, the impossibly narrow waist, the long torso , who transforms a woman into a warrior.
Over the years she has dressed some of the world’s most famous female stars, including Hollywood stars Cate Blanchett, models Kate Moss and Naomi Campbell, and musicians Florence Welch and FKA Twigs. Lady Gaga has never looked more stylish at the Oscars than she did in 2019, when she wore a 1950s-inspired black McQueen dress.
And when former child star Elle Fanning hit the red carpet at the Cannes Film Festival this summer in a pale pink McQueen ball gown with a corset and flowing chiffon skirt, she radiated adult film star glamor.
Still, Burton was never just about celebrities and models. When Francois-Henri Pinault, owner of the Kering Group, which acquired the majority stake in the McQueen brand in 2001, hosted a fantastic candlelit dinner party in London in 2019 to celebrate the opening of Alexander McQueen’s flagship store on Old Bond Street, I was… wasn’t surprised that the party’s guest list included both the team in the studio and the most important figures in the fashion world.
It was in keeping with Burton’s work ethic that alongside people like then-British Vogue editor Edward Enninful and supermodel Naomi Campbell, her studio’s model cutter, corset cutter and other technicians sat alongside.
On Saturday she will present her final collection under the McQueen brand at Paris Fashion Week. No doubt the VIPs of the fashion world will gather to see it and I can imagine a tear or two will be shed because it will truly feel like the end of an era.
I hope that Burton, still only 49 years old, starts her own label after a well-deserved rest and doesn’t quit the fashion business entirely.
She is one of those rare people who has equal amounts of flair, determination and technical ability and has quietly risen to the top based on her talent alone.
And there’s no doubt that the Princess of Wales will be one of her very first clients as she continues to design.