Macabre, or McQueen, at Marchesa February 15, 2012, 8:11 pm Illusion dresses that appear as if the sequins and lace were embroidered directly on the body are nothing new at Marchesa, but the designers Georgina Chapman and Keren Craig took a turn this season that you could call macabre, or you could call McQueen. A to-the-floor dress of panels of hand-stitched black lace revealed, as the model walked by, that she was also wearing a bodysuit embroidered with a life-size skeleton in silver beads. On her arm, you could make out the humerus, radius and ulna, and on her back were ribs and vertebrae. It was like a fashion X-ray. If the designers were thinking of realistic portrayals of the body, maybe that was because their inspiration was a William-Adolphe Bouguereau painting, "A Soul Brought to Heaven." Or maybe they're just in a dark mood. There were also some new shorter dresses, a welcome development from Marchesa, like a tough laser-cut black leather dress with a fluted skirt. Conversely, for evening, they went slightly nuts with the gold lamé, sending out a ball gown so large that it scraped audience members on both sides of the runway. People seemed to love it.