Seán McGirr inspired by modern identity and ‘London girls’ in one of strongest collections to date, as brand cuts jobs and struggles for momentum
Beneath the Paris fashion week hoopla – Chappell Roan resplendent in the front row, champagne flowing backstage – there were dark undercurrents at Alexander McQueen’s Paris fashion week show. The brand has seen a 60% decline in turnover over the past three years. Workforce cuts were made in the London headquarters last year, and a third of the brand’s 180 employees in Italy are thought to be at risk of losing their jobs. Fifteen years after the death of Lee McQueen, the brand is struggling to maintain momentum.
The founder is a hallowed name in the fashion industry, and one of the few modern designers to whose character and story the wider public feel a connection. But the generation who wore McQueen’s original bumsters have aged out of shock-value fashion, and the name has less power over younger consumers.
Perhaps adversity suits McQueen, which has always leant into a fatalistic kind of glamour. Seán McGirr, the 37-year-old Dubliner who has been creative director since 2023, showed one of his strongest collections to date. The show opened with a herringbone jacket long enough – if barely – to pass as a dress, strictly buttoned through the waist and dissolving into soft waves that skimmed the upper thigh. (Backstage, McGirr said he had been looking at archive pieces from McQueen’s 20-year-old Widows of Culloden collection, a masterpiece of controlled emotion, for the silhouettes.)
