There’s a root of unsettling beauty at the core of McQueen. Its founder created collections inspired by Hans Bellmer’s creepily conjoined poupées, ringed models in fire to approximate Jeanne d’Arc’s immolation, devoted a couture outing to the reanimated, Frankenstein-like women stitched together by a Victorian counterpart to Ed Gein, whose gruesome creations came back to life to seek their revenge. A parable for plastic surgery, to some of the most face-lifted in the world? Perhaps. Even when the clothes were achingly lovely, in laces or organza or massed tulle, it was never about a mere pretty, passive femininity. McQueen wanted to freak you out.
As a model passed by with her face concealed behind a menacing mask, lacquered to resemble too-poreless flesh, you knew Seán McGirr wanted to evoke those same ideas in his Autumn/Winter 2026 McQueen show. It was there in powdery porcelain make-up, in the Stepford Wives perfection of the coiled, coiffed hair. Those masks reminded me of anecdotal stories of 19th-century high society women – including Virginie Gautreau, John Singer Sargent’s famous Madame X – who had their skin professionally enamelled to appear like glossy, idealised dolls. Those women had to stay still, and silent, otherwise their faces would shatter into a thousand tiny cracks. It’s a story straight out of the McQueen playbook.
But McGirr was thinking of now, not then. “We’re always on; always curating, consuming, performing and being watched,” McGirr stated. Obviously, today that includes fashion designers like himself, expected to churn out soundbites, to appear and hawk wares, essentially. McGirr geared his collection, rather, to what lies beneath – behind the mask. However, there wasn’t some grand denouement. When you peeled back the layers of his McQueen clothes, or removed the mask, it wasn’t a Roald Dahl, Grand High Witch situation, of rotted innards and horror. That’s very 1990s, fashion has moved on. Rather, McGirr’s clothes were about X-raying themselves, to a degree. Layers of organza were placed over laces, showcasing them, sure, but equally trapping them inside. Which is maybe a comment on our dichotomous, inside-outside everything-on-show kind of world right now.
“Claustrophobic” was a word McGirr used to describe some of his fabric treatments, although presumably not silhouettes, which were McQueen-slim but never corseting or constricting. One had a signature McQueen-ism, a great slash across the belly as if the model was being disembowelled – or something inside set free. The tightly massed feathers on a bodysuit and bolero were impressive, and a throwback to a look from McQueen’s first Givenchy show, reflecting his own ornithological obsessions. And while the outright, overt prettiness of lace and organza evening gowns, hips and breasts emphasised by cups and folds of pleated fabric, seem antithetical to the oft brutality of Lee McQueen’s vision of women – he once famously stated, “I want people to be afraid of the women I dress” – they too had archival antecedents. One of McQueen’s most lovely collections, Sarabande, is just turning 20 – it’s the one that closed with gowns in this vein, and a finale dress scattering flowering in its wake, while a frenetic baroque orchestra played Handel’s sarabande in D Minor at a demented clip.
McGirr made his own gesture towards McQueen showmanship: he showed his collection in veiled corridors hung with gossamer, which raised up at the finale to reveal his models in formation, posed like perfect mannequins on a central dais. McQueen is a tricky gig – it would be satisfying to see McGirr up those archival links in the clothes, and also to embrace the spectacle that defined its founder, and his house. As McGirr said, people are always watching, expecting a performance. This label gives him license to really smash those expectations.
