Seán McGirr’s third collection for McQueen felt like stepping through a warped looking glass. And while the set design certainly helped the metaphor, the clothes themselves undeniably complied with the analogy. The past, both in its mythological sense and branded one, was twisted, stretched, and reanimated.

Inspired by Charles Dickens’ Night Walks, the show unfolded like a fever dream of Victorian London. The ghosts of McQueen’s greatest hits loomed large, but they didn’t haunt so much as they prowled. Voluminous short jackets, their proportions exaggerated to near-surreal extremes, swelled with a sense of tension. Intricate bullion embroidery gleamed under the lights like gilded armor, elevating the collection’s dark romanticism into something almost ceremonial.

But perhaps the clearest nod to the house’s legacy was the return of the skull print—an emblem of McQueen’s past, now recast in McGirr’s vision. Not just a symbol of mortality, but of transformation—of an aesthetic lineage being unraveled and reassembled. This wasn’t nostalgia; it was excavation, reinvention, a rewriting of history with a sharper, more brutal pen—McGirr’s boldest statement so far.

Words by Pedro Vasconcelos

McQUEEN FW25

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