LONDON is at the heart of McQueen’s mythology, and for Spring/Summer 2027, Seán McGirr brings it home, not by looking backwards, but by excavating its contradictions: its Gothic bone structure and restless youth, its ceremony and subversion, its tailoring traditions and nocturnal energy. The result is a collection that feels most convincing when these tensions are allowed to coexist, when Lee’s history becomes a living language rather than an archive to be imitated.
There are moments where McGirr seems to grasp the house with particular clarity. The collaboration with Huntsman is one. Three bespoke silhouettes, cut in heritage British wools, elongate the body with exaggerated shoulders and high, narrow waists, pushing the discipline of Savile Row towards something more sculptural and slightly strange. It is precisely the kind of friction that has always made McQueen’s tailoring so compelling: taking from the establishment’s craft and abruptly turning it against itself. The connection feels all the more resonant given the houses’ previous collaborations in 2002 and 2012.
Likewise, Shaun Leane’s presence gives the collection a sense of continuity that runs deeper than reference. A recycled-silver harness, created for the SS27 collection, brings the body into focus as both ornament and armour, while archival Leane pieces from Joan and Pantheon ad Lucem quietly collapse decades of McQueen history into the present. These are not nostalgic gestures so much as reminders that the house has always understood jewellery, tailoring and fashion as forms of transformation.
Elsewhere, the mood is younger, more restless. Smoked tulle and reflective organza catch acid florals; lacquered satin meets leather belt harnesses; nocturnal jacquards dissolve into transparency. The palette moves between almost holy darkness and the washed-out fluorescence of an underground rave, bringing a fitting pulse to the contrast.
This is perhaps where the collection is most alive: in its refusal to settle on a single mood. At times, the disparate references can feel slightly untethered, as though several versions of London are speaking at once. Yet that looseness also roots the collection in youth culture. Rather than attempting to recreate the severity of McQueen’s past, McGirr allows the house to feel contemporary and open to a new generation.
The most successful looks achieve a rare equilibrium: precise but romantic, historic but distinctly now. “Angels in the dark”, as the House describes them in the show notes: looks that are aptly elusive and faintly dangerous. For McGirr, it seems London was just a setting to return to it, it was an ideology. The capital is a place where old institutions and new subcultures continually collide, and maybe the only place where McQueen’s history can still be made to move.
by Imogen Clark