Grandiose and Brutal, Seán McGirr Brings McQueen Back to London

Having lived in the city since he was 17, London – birthplace to Lee – is where McGirr feels most inspired. “It’s not about leaving Paris, but it is about returning to the roots,” he tells Alexander Fury, unveiling his Spring/Summer 2027 collection

Seán McGirr says that, as a fresher at Central Saint Martins, he would go to the National Gallery to look at the Baptism of Christ, painted in the 15th century by Piero della Francesca. “I was obsessed with it,” he recalls. Alongside, obviously, the slightly more 21st-century pursuits of dancing all night in various insalubrious London locales. Whether the two actually abutted during his nascent years as a designer is a moot point – it was the idea of melding those two different unrealities of London, the exuberance of nightlife and the placid, static calm of della Francesca’s art, that shaped his Spring/Summer 2027 show for McQueen.

A mix of the sacred and profane is, of course, quintessentially McQueen – a stone’s throw from the house’s base in Clerkenwell, some 30 years ago, McQueen staged a seminal show in Christchurch Spitalfields. He spread the rumour his ancestors were buried under the floor, mounted his women with antlers like the horned beasts of the Book of Revelations, and had jeweller Shaun Leane craft a sacrilegious crown of thorns in sterling silver. And, as McGirr himself cited a few days before his show, McQueen was was a raver – indeed, he said that’s where he sourced his inspiration, rather than from the capital’s museums and storied art institutions. Never mind the fact that the final collection McQueen ever worked on was, in part, devoted to heavenly creatures plucked from a medieval past.

Of course, all those antecedents automatically boiled to the surface given that McQueen was showing in London, the first time a mainline McQueen collection had been unveiled there in more than 25 years. “It’s not about leaving Paris, but it is about returning to the roots,” McGirr says, quietly. “For me, London has always been the most stimulating place. I moved here when I was 17. And Lee was born here, and worked here, and was so inspired by here. He talked very openly in interviews about the rave culture, the club scene.” And in the pieces themselves, there was a melding of dual pasts – the models’ horned hair, for instance, was part medieval misericord hobgoblin, part Keith Flint from the Prodigy (his band mate Maxim once modelled for McQueen). Meanwhile, this show itself was staged in Lincoln’s Inn Chapel – over graves, once again, the hair echoing the vaulted gothic architecture of the space. “I was thinking of London – grandiose, and brutal,” McGirr said.

The same is true of McQueen as a brand – and this season McGirr was embracing its traditions and markers wholeheartedly. A return to London roots mirrored a return to the roots of the label. The grandiose were the evening gowns with billowing panniers like wings, embroidered with silver or hand-made organza feathers, rather than the real deal, in a dusty della Francesca palette flashed with phosphorescent pink, blue and green that in part recalled the dazzling morning light after emerging from a darkened club. “Transcendence” was what McGirr was going for. 

But he stated he has also been studying McQueen tailoring, couching the house in those codes of craftsmanship and age-old technique. A sequence of jackets had sleeves lapping from breastbone to shoulderblade – “I started cutting jackets to evoke the idea of angel wings,” said McGirr – they were sharper and definitely more brutal than those dresses. McGirr also collaborated on a series of pieces with the Savile Row tailor Huntsman, who made McQueen’s own clothes. Elsewhere, McGirr’s tailoring – the show’s strongest suit – was cut to grip the body, lapels sharply peaked and revers turned-up and highly buttoned to slash across the torso. “Sculptural precision is a real message I am pushing,” McGirr commented. 

Sculpture leads to the aforementioned work of Shaun Leane, one of McQueen’s longest collaborators. McGirr engaged his near-namesake to create new works – a solid-silver harness echoing leather bondage pieces, Leane’s sublimation worn by Karen Elson, an original McQueen woman. There was also a Leane piece drawn directly from McQueen’s archive, originally shown as part of the Autumn/Winter 1998 collection Joan, in silver studded with garnets. It’s made of roses, but they all have thorns. Quintessential McQueen. This collection was McGirr’s demonstration of his knowledge of McQueen heritage, melding with his own lived experience. Past, and present.