Alexander McQueen is back at London Fashion Week: what the return of the iconic house means for the capital

There were the bin bags stuffed with Alexander McQueen’s entire 1993 Taxi Driver collection, dumped near a King’s Cross nightclub to dodge the coat-check charge, then cleared and never seen again; the smashed-up 1970s car which caught fire at Borough Market when a guest knocked over a flaming grease pot during a power cut before It’s a Jungle Out There in 1997; and on the runway, that extraordinary 1998 moment Shalom Harlow held her poise on a spinning disc at Gatliff Road Warehouse, a disused bus depot in Victoria, as robots spat spray paint at her white dress like cobras.

The well of fashion lore surrounding Lee McQueen and the city where he was born, trained and propelled to become the greatest designer of his generation is bottomless. Now, London is set to trill with excitement once again as the British house, which has shown at Paris Fashion Week for the past 25 years, comes home.

Infamous stories about Lewisham-born McQueen combined with clothes that shocked as much as they changed the way we dress — from extreme corseted jackets tailored expertly thanks to his Savile Row training to bumsters and savaged tartan skirts — have allowed Britain to punch above its weight on the global fashion stage for decades. He still remains one of the main reasons many young people decide to pursue careers in fashion or the arts today, and why our capital and its creative colleges draw them from far and wide.

A true London designer

McQueen himself graduated from Central Saint Martins in 1992 with his Jack the Ripper Stalks His Victims show that saw models saunter down the runway like ladies of the night wearing locks of human hair stitched and bonded beneath their jacket linings. “His clothes move like birds. He can cut material like a god,” noted the late, great eccentric stylist Isabella Blow at the time, and who bought the entire collection for £5,000.

Alexander McQueen with a model at his London Spring/Summer Collection fashion show on September 28, 1997

Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images

“London’s where I was brought up. It’s where my heart is and where I get my inspiration,” McQueen once said, but business increasingly pulled him towards Paris. In 1996 he secured the top job at Givenchy, before moving the shows for his own label there in 2001. The strategy was maintained by Sarah Burton, who first joined McQueen as an intern in 1996 and took over the house after his death in February 2010, and later by Seán McGirr, the 38-year-old Dublin-born designer and fellow CSM graduate, who was appointed creative director in October 2023.

There have been one-off shows back in the UK, most recently at the Old Royal Naval College in Greenwich in October 2022, which followed the roof of Tobacco Dock in October 2021 (both took place in the “McQueen bubble”; a rather hot, transparent erectable showspace by Chilean architect Smiljan Radić).

However, not since What a Merry-Go-Round was shown in February 2001 (a carnivalesque spectacular which saw clown-faced models with cobwebbed hair shaped like jester hats strut in frothy black tulle ballgowns and drag gold-sprayed skeletons from their ankles) has the great British house shown on the official London Fashion Week schedule.

A model walks the runway during the Alexander McQueen Ready to Wear Fall/Winter 2001-2002 fashion show as part of the London Fashion Week

Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images

“What is extraordinary when you look back at those shows is how completely realised they were. They didn’t feel like fashion shows in the conventional sense; they felt like happenings. There was danger and unpredictability, and you genuinely didn’t know what you were about to see,” says model Erin O’Connor who was one of the bewitching clowns weaving around the merry-go-round, and a vital part of other seminal shows including Joan (AW98) and Voss (SS01).

“There was danger and unpredictability; you genuinely didn’t know what you were about to see”

Model Erin O’Connor

“I was never more alive,” she recalls. “I think what captured London at that time wasn’t simply the scale of the spectacle, it was the audacity of attempting it. There was this feeling that people were making things because they had to make them, finding unlikely spaces and somehow pulling these enormous ideas together. There is something very moving about McQueen coming back to London. This is the city where the language of the house was formed, and where so many of those extraordinary early shows happened.”

“London has always been at the heart of McQueen; there’s a uniquely visceral energy to the city that runs throughout the house’s history and continues to inspire everything we do today,” McGirr says ahead of the spring summer 2027 show, which will take place in Holborn. “Returning to London Fashion Week allows us to deeply engage with that spirit and the creative community that defines both London and this house.”

New directions

It has not been plain sailing since McGirr took the helm. Acid green steel-cast dresses and furry tube tops which extended over models’ faces like veterinary Elizabethan collars caused eyebrows to raise during his March 2024 debut. But bulbous shearling coats and hyper-realistic horse-hoof platform heels complete with tails from the show became staples of a tenure which has since improved season-on-season.

The autumn winter 2026 collection, which took place inside a sports hall in south-west Paris this March, was a spectacle: typically exquisite McQueen suiting with wide, flounced lapels met double-breasted herringbone tweed coat-mini-dresses and more risqué translucent sheer, floral halterneck dresses on a maze-like catwalk of gauze. The show climaxed as all curtains dropped to reveal a cornucopia of models, and Chappell Roan exploded with applause on the front row.

INDIGITAL.TV courtesy Alexander McQueen

Despite this, the stakes for this homecoming are unusually high. Kering, the conglomerate that owns McQueen alongside brands including Gucci, does not disclose McQueen’s sales separately, but Morgan Stanley estimated revenues at €830m (£712m) in 2022 and by last year, other estimates put them below €200m. The house remains loss-making and in “deep restructuring”, with Kering citing that losses at McQueen weighed on profitability. Former Prada boss Gianfranco D’Attis arrived as chief executive in June with a mandate for a “leaner and more disciplined” business, prompting inevitable (but as yet unsubstantiated) mutterings around McGirr’s future.

With something to prove, it will be a jewel in this LFW’s crown regardless. “There is a real sense of momentum around this season,” says Laura Weir, CEO of the British Fashion Council. “McQueen’s return is hugely significant. It is one of the great British fashion stories: a house born from the extraordinary creativity and cultural energy of London that went on to become globally influential. Having McQueen back on the London schedule sends a very powerful signal about the relevance of this city and its creative community. Major international houses bring global attention, buyers, media, talent and audiences and that strengthens the ecosystem around everyone showing here.”

“It is one of the great British fashion stories: a house born from the extraordinary creativity and cultural energy of London”

Laura Weir, CEO of the British Fashion Council

“But what makes London special is the combination. It is never only about the biggest names. The power comes from having globally recognised houses alongside independent businesses, established British designers and the next generation of talent. That mix is incredibly difficult to replicate anywhere else,” she says.

Alongside the strongest emerging talents — chief among them this September are Paolo Carzana, Chopova Lowena and Aaron Esh — other headline-grabbing moments count Christopher Kane’s return to the circuit as creative director of Mulberry, the reliably thronging Burberry show, and somewhat fresh meat as M&S makes its LFW debut. “It felt like a natural moment for us,” says Maddy Evans, director of M&S Women. “This year marks 100 years of M&S fashion, but rather than simply looking back, we wanted to use that milestone to express where the brand is today and where we are heading next.” Half of the collection will be priced below £50, and every runway look will be available to shop immediately.

Amusingly, McQueen might have approved of this addition which some tut tut. In 1996, David Bowie interviewed him for Dazed and asked, “Armani or Versace?” The arch-provocateur retorted: “Marks & Spencer.”

As of this morning, London Fashion Week has officially begun and with the international style press and buyers having descended, anticipation for the McQueen show is building. Dame Anna Wintour is said to have RSVPd yes, and on Sunday night eyes will be on how McGirr chooses to nod to the late founder. Certainly, the former US Vogue editor-in-chief will be among those hoping any homage to the good ol’ days stops short of sending the venue up in flames.