When you arrive at a misty moor of a catwalk at Alexander McQueen, your heart leaps a little at the prospect you might be treated to one of the murky witchfests that this label does to such atmospheric and shiver-inducing effect.

We were. For autumn, Sarah Burton produced a collection that was as chilling as it was eery. Not that, for all this, you could easily categorise it as a gothic show. Ironically, given its wyrd sister feeling, this show was full of light from the off.

Three-tiered lampshade dresses were made from a heavy broderie anglaise in sparkling white, with gathered renaissance sleeves and waspied waists tied with velvet bows. These stood out from the black goat hair and chiffon coats worn with them like fluorescent beams, bobbing and dipping on their farthingales as models walked.

Then a silver jacquard of oak leaves across black silk on capes and trousers - yet more light to pervade the gloom. Those leaves were a stand-out motif in a collection that seemed to foreground folksiness - not in aesthetic but in symbolism.

Stars and acorns were embroidered into broderie pieces, then rendered 3D as bunched appliqué, white on black and vice versa, on shiftin sheer fabric that seemed to glow in the deliberate gloaming. It was a greenwood of sorts, an escape into it maybe or a darker reference to its increasing scarcity. It was arcane and modern all at the same time.

But for all the bodices and folkloric detail, this didn't feel like a collection of historical references. They were ably portrayed in pieces that felt hard to place chronologically - kirtles and crinolines looked more like babydoll dresses than they did RSC costume department. High-necked blouses were stark above and beyond Edwardiana.

Accents of fur, rose-shaped tulle bunching on dresses and sprouts of maribou provided a degrade effect of texture on column gowns but also on jackets and stoles, giving movement to a page of a fairytale.

It was every bit as theatrical as the setting suggested, delightfully so. But the thing about McQueen is that the discombobulation, the defamiliarisation and the dramaturgy only serve to enhance the reality of the clothes once they appear.

These will become brilliant commercial pieces, not costume-ish but definitely couture-like. A couture of the sort that will work with jeans perhaps.

But let's not think about that yet. Let's just dwell on the magic and the mystery that this label excels at serving up.