Fashion can be theatre, but only if it's really great

Is fashion today a circus, with designers expected to walk a tightrope between sales and spectacle.

A McQueen design in Savage Beauty

There's a category in the Evening Standard's theatre awards, which took place at the Old Vic on Sunday night, that's enigmatically dubbed "Beyond Theatre". That's applicable to a whole bunch of things – and indeed, a whole bunch of things have won, from Danny Boyle's Olympics opening ceremony, to the 2013 BBC Proms. It's only been going for five years, so there isn't a swathe (yet) of illustrative examples to pluck from – but suffice to say they're theatrical, as opposed to theatre.

This time round, the award went to Savage Beauty, the Alexander McQueen retrospective staged (more luvvie linguistics) with such aplomb this summer, and necessitating round-the-clock opening in its final weekend to fit in eager audiences. It was a smash hit – the run was extended, before it had even opened.

My thoughts didn't turn so much to the exhibition, as to the man himself, and his work, and the transformation of fashion into a spectator sport. McQueen was hugely responsible for that: "Like it or not, my shows are a form of entertainment," he stated in 2009. He was referencing his own feelings on the subject, but touched on the fact that other people have an issue with fashion becoming a live-wire act.

My relationship with the notion of fashion as theatre is fractious. On the one hand, I'm a fan of the showmanship of Galliano and McQueen, latterly of Marc Jacobs and Miuccia Prada too. On the other, I tend to tub-thump the outdated notion that fashion shows are… well, a way of showing fashion – a gussied-up trade-show as opposed to a three-ring four-city circus.

The truth is less black-and-white, of course. Fashion is expected to be both of these things, simultaneously. The demands of the press, and the buyers, are now equalled (if not superseded) by the demands of a global audience – an audience whose sheer number means they're the ones buying the clothes, or the make-up, accessories, and other lucrative bits and bobs that spin off from them so easily. That's been used as a justification for flashy fashion shows for decades – the wide sweep of the internet has made it undeniably true.

And even a curmudgeon like me got a shiver up the spine when that train pulled in at the Louis Vuitton show, or when McQueen ringed his models with fire.

Perhaps fashion today is a circus: and designers are expected to walk a tightrope, between sales and spectacle. When I marvel at a fashion show, it's not because of pyrotechnics, but because of that balancing act – a designer exhibiting supreme confidence, staging a spectacle and still knowing it won't upstage their clothes. That's what makes a designer great, I think: not just being good, but knowing it.