The Alexander McQueen brand made a dramatic return to London Fashion Week, staging a show in a subterranean 17th-century chapel, a move that signals a strategic homecoming under new leadership as the label undergoes a stark restructuring plan. The collection, shown on the final day of London Fashion Week, featured steel harnesses, bulky ankle-strapped heels resembling electronic monitoring tags, and a chain mail dress of tiny silver skulls, reaffirming the house's signature dark aesthetic.
A Return to Physical and Unconventional Roots
The venue choice was a deliberate nod to the brand's history. In the 2000s, Lee McQueen staged legendary shows at London Fashion Week, including Dante, held in a Hawksmoor church with a skeleton in the front row and a soundtrack of organ music and gunfire, and Voss, where models were trapped inside a giant mirrored box set up as a psychiatric ward. Twenty-five years later, the brand returned from the Paris schedule to a creepily beautiful chapel, embracing its unconventional past.
Bringing McQueen home to London was the first decision made by Gianfranco d'Attis, who became the new chief executive in June. The energy of the show proved it was the right call, as McQueen hits different in London, where the name is still revered.
New Business Strategy and Creative Direction
The new business strategy is to streamline and refocus McQueen: fewer trainers and sweatshirts, more evening gowns, and British tailoring. Red carpet dressing remains a strength for the brand. For the homecoming, creative director Seán McGirr, now in his third year at the brand, went deep into British references.
McGirr picked the vaulted undercroft venue because it felt like being inside his favourite painting in the National Gallery, Piero della Francesca's The Baptism of Christ. Jackets paid homage to the radical tailoring of Tommy Nutter, and Keith Flint hair horns referenced rave culture. “London is a constant stimulation,” he said backstage. “Style on the street is not conventional. I love the wrongness of it.”
Ethereal Touches and Contrasting Shows
McGirr, 38, with a dimpled smile and a soft Dublin accent, brings instincts that track lighter and sweeter than the house's reckless youth. Organza was whipped into meringue-like peaks at the shoulders of a corsetted ivory lace dress. He said he wanted the famous McQueen exaggerated shoulders “to look like angel wings. I wanted the message to feel ethereal, and light in a sense.”
In contrast, the Roksanda show at a rooftop garden next to the National Theatre was a sunny affair, with swathes of cherry- and lavender-coloured silk glinting under a blue sky. Thickly plaited rope belts in contrast colours were a tribute to the monumental fabric sculptures of Francoise Grossen, and a celebration of “the feminine energy of braiding, which is connected to hair, to craft, to housework”, the designer Roksanda Ilincic said.
The McQueen homecoming show marks a pivotal moment for the brand, which is undergoing a stark restructuring plan of shuttered stores and job losses. The decision to return to London, coupled with a refined creative direction, aims to restore the label's heat and reposition it for future success.
