Divine Euphoria: McQueen's Seán McGirr Finds the Sacred in London’s Subculture

McQueen's new CEO Gianfranco D'Attis brought the house back to London for the new Spring/Summer 2027 show. Photograph above and cover picture both from Sean McGirr's collection for the house.

After a quarter of a century on the official Paris Fashion Week schedule, McQueen came home to London and artistic director Seán McGirr made sure it was a night to remember. Beneath the Gothic vaults of Lincoln’s Inn Chapel, sinuous beauty met rave culture, Savile Row tailoring met metal harnesses, and McQueen’s past collided with its future. With Shaun Leane back at the house and a stellar London crowd filling the front row, this was no quiet homecoming. It was McQueen, back where it belongs, with the volume turned up. Story by Ambrogio de Lauro

Florence Welch attends the 

McQueen show in London. 

LONDON has always been a city of contrasts where the old sits next to the new and the traditional runs parallel to the avant-garde. A Gothic chapel sits around the corner from the latest nightclub; conservative tailoring collides with a kid’s Skater outfit; centuries-old stone clashes with a flash of fluorescent colour. 

For Spring/Summer 2027, Alexander McQueen came home to London, and Seán McGirr made the return feel less like a change of fashion capital than a reconnection with the source code of the house.

McQueen had presented its collections in Paris since 2001, following investment from what was then Gucci Group, making this return to the official London Fashion Week schedule after 25 years particularly significant. 

The decision was made by Gianfranco D’Attis shortly after becoming the house’s new CEO in June. His stated aim was to reconnect McQueen with the city that shaped it, while refocusing the house around the elevated tailoring, eveningwear and craftsmanship that have always defined its strongest work. D’Attis has said the intention is for London to remain the home of the shows, rather than this being a one-season gesture.

And what a homecoming.The show took place beneath the vaulted ceiling of the Undercroft at Lincoln’s Inn Chapel, a 17th-century space where ancient stone, graves and Gothic architecture provided an appropriately atmospheric setting. In the front row, Florence Welch, Siouxsie Sioux, Alexa Chung, Emma Corrin, Emilia Clarke, Caitríona Balfe, Lila Moss, Georgia May Jagger, Erin O’Connor and Edward Enninful were among the friends and figures connected to the house. It was a particularly McQueen gathering: musicians, actors, models, editors and London personalities from different generations, reflecting the collection’s own collision of history and contemporary culture.

Florence Welch, Siouxsie Sioux, Emilia Clarke and Georgia May Jagger made it a particularly McQueen gathering, mixing musicians, actors, models, editors from different generations

Dramatic horn-like forms

made striking hair designs.

McGirr described the collection as “a celebration of London’s ceaselessly stimulating and transcendent power,” adding that the city’s “uncompromising attitude and subversive spirit” sit at the heart of McQueen. His inspiration moved through “its streets, subversion, energy and attitude” and, intriguingly, “the opportunity in the shadows.”

That last phrase could almost be the collection’s title. McGirr was chasing what he calls “divine euphoria,” finding a “synergy between the sacred and the subcultural.” The clothes moved accordingly between the ethereal and the urban: smoked tulle, acid floral prints, reflective organza and the pale palette of religious portraiture collided with the washed-out colours of underground raves.

Lustrous lacquered satin was tightened by leather harnesses. Sheer fabrics exposed the body beneath beautifully engineered tailoring. Sculptural shoulders opened out into McGirr’s “angel wing” construction, while tall, narrow suits brought the discipline of Savile Row into sharper, more elongated territory.

The British tailoring connection was made literal through Huntsman, whose 177 years of Savile Row history informed three bespoke menswear silhouettes created specifically for the collection. Heritage British wools were cut with exaggerated shoulders and high, narrow waists, turning traditional tailoring into something elongated, slightly strange and unmistakably McQueen.

Designs moved between the ethereal and the urban: smoked tulle, acid floral prints, reflective organza and a palette of religious portraiture collided with the colours of underground raves

Sean McGirr's eveningwear

offered some of the most

arresting looks in the collection.

Eveningwear supplied the collection’s most seductive moments. McGirr used intricate and elemental embroidery, nocturnal jacquards, sheer organza, metallic leaves and gowns that appeared to hover between fragility and armour.

Thn came Shaun Leane. The London-born master jeweller, who first collaborated with McQueen in 1995, returned with a bespoke recycled-silver harness, while two extraordinary archival pieces from Joan and Pantheon ad Lucem were brought back into the collection. It was a particularly potent reunion, reconnecting McGirr’s McQueen with one of Lee McQueen’s most important creative collaborators without turning the runway into an exercise in nostalgia.

The skull returned too, transformed into intricate metalwork and embroidery rather than simply printed across a garment. It felt less like a logo than a memory resurfacing.And then London’s night life entered the room.

Hair rose into sharp, horn-like forms, while sheer layers, reflective surfaces, metallic embellishment and deliberately unsettled styling gave the collection the feeling of clothes caught somewhere between the dance floor and dawn. A. G. Cook’s soundtrack, accompanied by Shards Voices choir, pushed the atmosphere further into something simultaneously euphoric and eerie.

McGirr’s London collection is both formal and unruly, religious and rebellious, historic and completely wired into the present. That is why the return from Paris matters: McQueen may have built an international identity in Paris, but its emotional vocabulary was forged in the British capital.

See the full collection below from McQueen Spring/Summer 2027