The McQueen Question Reaches a Fever Pitch At London Fashion Week

London has given fashion some of its most legendary and acclaimed designers, among them Vivienne Westwood, John Galliano, and Lee Alexander McQueen. Yet each member of this trinity eventually decamped to Paris after planting their roots in the United Kingdom. For many designers across the globe, Paris, the birthplace of haute couture, has been, and is to this day, the one and only fashion mecca.

When Irishman Seán McGirr took on Alexander McQueen, the brand, in October of 2023, following Sarah Burton’s exit, it felt as if the entire fashion ecosystem, insiders and fans alike, raised a collective eyebrow. Burton had been McQueen’s right hand and kept his brand alive after his death in 2010. McGirr, conversely, was an unknown, having worked for Jonathan Anderson at JW Anderson, out of the spotlight, as such a position affords a designer. When McGirr’s debut McQueen collection walked the runway in March of 2024 in Paris, some raved and some scoffed. In a way, inspiring such a polarizing reaction seemed right down the McQueen alley.

That collection was shown in a parking lot in Paris that, it seemed, was intended to evoke the in-the-fringes spirit of those early McQueen shows. It lacked the polish and cohesiveness of Burton’s collections, which were often balanced and harmonious, but that seemed to be by design. McGirr appeared to want to return McQueen to its roots. This season, by taking his spring-summer 2027 show back to London Fashion Week, which McQueen left in 2001, he fulfilled that intention at last.

The cavernous gatehouse of a historic Tudor-era Inns of Court in Bloomsbury, with tall arches carved in stone, provided the setting for McGirr’s most stylized show for McQueen yet. He said he’d been inspired by a painting he saw at the National Gallery in London, Piero della Francesca’s The Baptism of Christ, which predates the onset of the Tudor era by about four decades. “This painting represents this idea of transcendence, serenity—these words I could not get out of my mind,” said McGirr backstage. “I wanted to bring two worlds together, neoclassicism and London’s rave culture, and create this sort of tension.” Even if Della Francesca was an early Renaissance master rather than a neoclassicist, McGirr’s conceit sparked a certain curiosity.

“There’s a different attitude in London; there is a playful edge,” McGirr said, “people mix things in the street in the wrong way; it’s maybe not as conventional [as other cities] when it comes to style. I love the wrongness.”

He cited Cyberdog Rave Bar, the haven in London’s Camden neighborhood, as an inspiration, which he said he first visited when he was 13, and tasked A. G. Cook, the Charli xcx collaborator and one of London’s most venerated music producers at the moment, with providing an oontz-oontz soundtrack that sent a chill down everyone’s spines. One gets the sense that McGirr is the best kind of man to party with, and while the McQueen brand is known for threading a certain darkness, McGirr’s version is at its best when it embraces this side of his range. The kids who venerate McQueen as a fashion figurehead these days, after all, are likely to be found at the Cyberdog, just like McGirr once was.

McGirr’s tailoring, which he collaborated on with Huntsman of Savile Row, Lee McQueen’s own tailor, was adventurous in how it wrapped and warped the body. In past seasons it felt as if McGirr was trying to take McQueen in a younger direction, with short dresses and more sex appeal, but that wasn’t the case here.

Last week, an ensemble made for Naomi Campbell from the last show Lee McQueen did sold for $1,586,000 at auction. As I walked into this show, a big-shot Italian editor said that “if they sold the [McQueen] archive, they’d make more money than if they sold the company.” It may seem like an exaggeration, but it captured the looming feeling that bigger forces are at play at McQueen than McGirr himself.

Under its founder, McQueen felt urgent and had a sense of grit and angst. Its collections felt like a journal: a man in conversation with himself who was both detangling and knotting his ideas at the same time. But should fashion expect the same from McGirr? The original McQueen was perverse, and even if McGirr thinks that’s what he’s delivering, the brand is now, after all, a luxury maison owned by the Kering Group. It dresses celebrities—who look terrific in McGirr’s work, by the way—and sells handbags that cost close to $4,000. When McQueen was still alive, his shows were experimental and artistic implosions, and it was Burton who designed the commercial collections to fill shops and department store racks. Should fashion fanatics expect McGirr to somehow do both in one go? Is it fair for McQueen fans to demand grit out of a polished corporate entity?

Kane, who returned to LFW this week after shutting down his eponymous label some three years ago, faces a similar-ish challenge at Mulberry, where he debuted a new runway line, Mulberry by Christopher Kane, on Sunday afternoon.

Unlike legacy brands like Dior or Balenciaga, Mulberry and McQueen are fashion staples with contemporary rather than age-old histories. Mulberry, a leathergoods brand, is widely known for its It-bags: the Mulberry Bayswater and, more recently, the Mulberry Alexa, named after British aughts It-girl Alexa Chung. If McQueen is currently looking to regain its edge, Mulberry needs some of that “It” energy back. Enter Kane.

“He landed the plane!” said a thrilled Elizabeth Saltzman, former fashion director at VF, after the show when press and friends stormed backstage to greet Kane. This is a designer whose eponymous line was critically acclaimed and widely venerated, but whose business ultimately stagnated. His arrival at Mulberry represents a vast opportunity. He can bring clout and fashion gravitas to a brand that could use some fresh energy, and, in turn, Mulberry can provide him a space to create.

The collection yesterday didn’t deliver the It-girl catnip many in the crowd were perhaps expecting, and it also lacked some of Kane’s signature freak. Instead, it was somewhat austere and fairly severe. Kane repeated a singular motif, the outline of the flap of the Bayswater bag, through seams, hems, collars, and even heels. It came across as a very clear first intention for building out a label around the language of leathergoods. (For an example of how this could work, look no further than Coach in New York.) Time will tell if today’s It-girls do come, but this is a beloved designer whose bow at the end of the show drew hoots, hollers, and a standing ovation. Not a bad place to start.

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