Alexander McQueen showed in London for the first time in 25 years on Saturday, as creative director Sean McGirr presented the label’s spring/summer 2027 collection at Lincoln’s Inn Chapel. The house has staged its runway shows in Paris since the early 2000s, and the return to the city where the brand began framed the collection as a homecoming. The show was one of the most anticipated moments of the London season and drew a large fashion and music crowd to the historic chapel.
McGirr, the Dublin-born designer who took over the house in 2023 after succeeding Sarah Burton, leaned heavily on the archive of founder Lee Alexander McQueen. Models appeared with gelled hair shaped into horns, a nod to the autumn/winter 2009 Horn of Plenty collection, while lace face coverings and tightly laced corsets referenced the autumn/winter 1998 show known as Joan. The references placed McGirr’s own work in direct conversation with the founder’s most theatrical shows.
The clothes moved between the theatrical and the severe. Raven-black feathered dresses and silver skull embellishments sat alongside reflective fabrics and bondage-inspired accessories, tying the label’s recurring interest in sacred imagery to the look of London’s rave scene. The staging drew on the underground energy that shaped McQueen’s early work in the city.
The choice of location carried weight for the house. The founder, who trained on Savile Row and at Central Saint Martins before his death in 2010, once said London was where he was brought up, where his heart was and where he found his inspiration. McGirr’s decision to bring the collection back to the capital placed that history at the centre of the show.
Musician Siouxsie Sioux attended as guest of honour, a figure the house cited as a lasting inspiration for its founder. The homecoming came during a busy London Fashion Week that also featured Christopher Kane’s debut at Mulberry, part of a season shaped by heritage British names reasserting themselves on home ground. For McGirr, the show offered a chance to root the house’s identity in the city that produced it rather than the Paris calendar where it has long appeared.
