## The Fitting Room, Autumn 2024

The Fitting Room, Autumn 2024

Seán McGirr stands in the Alexander McQueen atelier on Old Bond Street, adjusting the sleeve pitch on a black wool coat. The model shifts her weight. McGirr steps back, tilts his head, says nothing for five seconds, then moves forward again. He pins the shoulder seam half an inch lower. The coat falls differently now—less rigid, more lived-in. He nods once and walks to the next rail.

This is his first full year as creative director of Alexander McQueen, a house built on drama and darkness and the kind of tailoring that makes other tailors nervous. McGirr, forty-one, came up through knitwear. He does not cut the same way Lee Alexander McQueen did. He does not need to.

Dries, Then JW

McGirr trained at Central Saint Martins—the same school McQueen attended, though a decade and a half later—and graduated in 2005. His degree show leaned heavily on knit construction, hand-manipulated textures, and a palette that ran from charcoal to darker charcoal. Dries Van Noten hired him almost immediately. He spent eight years in Antwerp, working his way up to head of design for the men's and women's knitwear studio. Dries does not do spectacle. He does precision, colour, and cloth that behaves exactly as it should. McGirr learned to build garments that looked simple and were not.

In 2015, JW Anderson brought him to London as design director. Anderson's studio moves fast—ideas turn into samples in days, not weeks—and McGirr adapted. He oversaw womenswear and worked closely on the brand's more conceptual pieces: the chain-link bags, the asymmetric knit dresses, the trousers that looked like skirts until you put them on. Anderson gave him room to experiment. McGirr used it.

By 2023, he had been at JW Anderson for eight years. He was well-regarded, well-paid, and not particularly visible outside the industry. Then Sarah Burton left Alexander McQueen in September, after thirteen years as creative director, and Kering began looking for her successor.

The Appointment

McGirr was announced in October 2023. The reaction was muted. Burton had steadied the house after McQueen's death in 2010, turning it into a commercial success without flattening its edge. She understood the archive. She could cut a jacket. She had dressed Kate Middleton for a royal wedding. McGirr had none of that history. He had knitwear and a quiet reputation.

His first collection for Alexander McQueen debuted in March 2024, during Paris Fashion Week. The show opened with a black knit dress, tightly ribbed, worn over trousers. Then came tailoring: sharp-shouldered blazers, trench coats with exaggerated lapels, trousers cut wide through the leg and tight at the ankle. The palette stayed dark—black, charcoal, deep navy—but McGirr introduced flashes of red and bone-white in the knitwear. The silhouette was new. Softer through the body, harder at the edges. Less armour, more second skin.

Critics were cautious. Some noted the absence of McQueen's Gothic theatrics. Others praised the wearability, the restraint, the fact that McGirr had not tried to imitate what came before. The collection sold well. Buyers responded to the tailoring, which felt modern without being minimal, and to the knitwear, which McGirr knows how to engineer.

Signature, Emerging

McGirr's second collection, shown in September 2024, pushed further. He opened with a series of knit dresses that clung to the body but moved like jersey—tight through the ribs, loose at the hem. The tailoring grew more fluid. He showed double-breasted blazers with soft shoulders and deep armholes, worn over slip dresses. The trousers were cut low on the hip and fell straight to the floor. He added leather—not the fetish-inflected leather McQueen favoured, but softer hides, treated to look almost like suede.

The colour expanded: rust, olive, a particular shade of grey-green that looked military without being literal. McGirr referenced McQueen's 1990s work—the sharp tailoring, the subversion of traditional British dress—but filtered it through his own vocabulary. He does not do corsets. He does not do skull motifs. He does precision, tension, and garments that look effortless until you try to copy them.

What is emerging is a signature built on contrast. Hard tailoring over soft knits. Masculine cuts on feminine silhouettes. Restraint punctuated by a single aggressive detail—a slashed sleeve, a leather panel, a hem that drags on the floor. McGirr is not trying to resurrect McQueen's vision. He is building his own, using the house's codes as a foundation rather than a script.

The Atelier, Still

Alexander McQueen's tailoring studio remains one of the best in London. The cutters are the same ones who worked under Burton, and before her, under McQueen himself. McGirr spends time there most days, working through fittings, adjusting patterns, asking questions. He did not come up through tailoring, and he does not pretend otherwise. But he understands structure. He knows how a shoulder should sit, how a lapel should roll, how much weight a cloth can carry before it stops moving.

His knitwear background shows in unexpected places. The way he engineers a sleeve so it does not pull at the armhole. The way he builds a bodice that stretches without losing its shape. The way he layers a knit under a jacket so the two pieces move as one. These are not traditional tailoring solutions. They work.

What Comes Next

McGirr has two years at Alexander McQueen. That is not long enough to judge a tenure, but it is long enough to see a direction. He is moving the house away from Gothic drama and towards something quieter, more architectural, more rooted in the everyday. The question is whether McQueen's audience—built on spectacle, on shows that felt like events, on clothes that demanded attention—will follow him there.

The early signs suggest they will. Sales are strong. The press is warming. McGirr is not trying to be McQueen, and that may be the smartest decision he has made. The house does not need another visionary. It needs a designer who can build clothes that work, that sell, that feel like McQueen without imitating it.

In the fitting room, McGirr finishes with the coat. The model walks across the studio. The coat moves with her, not against her. He watches for a moment, then turns back to the rail. There are thirty more pieces to fit before the end of the day. He does not look rushed. He looks like someone who knows exactly what he is doing, even if the rest of us are still catching up.