On a cold and wet Saturday night in Paris, Seán McGirr showed his debut collection as Alexander McQueen’s new creative director in an old train storage space. The concrete setting hearkened back to the early, gritty Lee McQueen shows. Eager attendees, sitting on rolled-up cushions in a highlighter neon green, wrapped in wool blankets in the same color to keep warm in the chilly room, could feel the anticipation in the air. The evening marked a new era for the British house, after longtime creative director and McQueen collaborator Sarah Burton’s departure in September.
The show began with a model stomping out with her hands inside the front pockets of a black draped laminated jersey dress that constricted her arms and torso. Immediately, it became clear McGirr was going somewhere different from Burton with Alexander McQueen, marching toward a place that was less about a celebration of the formal craft, and more focused on a punkish, zero-fucks-given attitude. What followed the dress were various takes on the Lee McQueen language: peaked shoulder jackets, embellished shrunken suiting, and deconstructed fisherman knits, to name a few. McGirr said he started with the founder’s Spring 1995 show, “The Birds,” as a reference point—that collection focused on the destruction and claustrophobic horrors found in Alfred Hitchcock’s 1963 classic film of the same name. As McGirr noted backstage after the show, his new vision for McQueen was about “this idea of a compressed silhouette, but this is a modern proposal. I wanted to bring that forward, bring those silhouettes forward, and see what I could do with real clothes.”
The tailored suiting proved to be among the more wearable pieces in a collection that leaned into the artistic, like the trio of “car dresses” in the show finale, inspired by Lee-era shapes and McGirr’s auto mechanic father, or the gigantic chunky knit sweaters with collars that encircled and concealed each model’s face. There was swagger in the way the models walked, which, along with the punkish clothes, made for a vibe rife with anarchy. McGirr said he wanted to hone in on distinctive characters for this debut, explaining that he was interested in those who “have really strong personalities, people I’d be curious to meet on the street.” He added, “I’m interested in this rough glamour of the East End of London in a way, and this sort of tattered opulence.”
There’s always a lot of pressure with a new creative director’s debut collection. And whether this was a successful vision or not is almost the wrong question. As my colleague pointed out after the show, McGirr came out swinging, offering an array of proposals for what the future of Alexander McQueen might look like. One critic asked him if he felt intimidated following in Burton’s footsteps of Burton. McGirr replied, calmly but confidently, “I don’t really see it like that. I feel that Lee McQueen’s message that he put out into the world is so relevant today. It’s about anti-politeness.” He elaborated: “We live in a very polite world at the moment, and I think at this moment, his message is more relevant than ever.”
Today, the fashion industry is impatient and doesn’t make much room for rebels like Lee McQueen. But this debut should be viewed through the lens of attitude, rather than fully formed design vision. If the takeaway is to be a little less polite, to let go and let be, we’ll just have to wait until next season to see how McGirr’s no-holds-barred approach to a high-pressure gig evolves.
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Brooke Bobb is the fashion news director at Harper’s Bazaar, working across print and digital platforms. Previously, she was a senior content editor at Amazon Fashion, and worked at Vogue Runway as senior fashion news writer.
