I don’t know who Blake Lively is wearing on this recent cover of Grazia but I’m a sucker for anything resembling a cage crinoline.

A year or two ago, Sadler’s Wells staged Eonnagata…co-created and performed by ballerina Sylvie Guillem, choreographer Russell Maliphant, and theatrical wizard Robert Lepage (Lepage may I just say…being Canadian). Based on the Chevalier d’Eon, famous cross dressing, sword wielding spy. How’s that for dishy? Anyway McQueen was asked to do the costumes and I just thought everything about it was absolute genius.

In fact I went twice.

This 18th century dress seems to share a similar inspiration…not to mention looking very like our shutter stripe fabric.

Hussian Chalayan probably has executed the most contemporary and stylized takes on this idea…also genius.

And if you happened to miss his ‘After Words’ in 2000, it was extraordinary.

Anish Kapoor’s at the Royal Academy….looks like a birdcage skirt to me!

And do we think McQueen saw this Uccello drawing from 1430′s when he designed those costumes? Probably not but this is a VERY reoccurring geometry that seems to really cross the boundaries.

So simple and yet so alluring.

Cool…