McQueen’s Febrile Instincts
Anders Christian Madsen reviews the McQueen Spring/Summer 2026 collection by Seán McGirr.
Seán McGirr had a febrile summer. “All through the season, I was talking to my friends in London just seeing how they felt. We spent the whole summer going to gigs and metal festivals and things like that, just picking up on the vibes. There was this febrile energy in the air,” he observed, following a McQueen show that repackaged the raunchier sides to the house’s identity. “I kind of wanted to ask a question, like, what happens when you tap into your primitive instincts? It was about your primitive mind and just feeling yourself… But super sexual, and picking up on that energy. Which I think is in the air.” Sounds like a good summer.
Inside the Tennis Club de Paris, McGirr created a set of teepee-like constructions made of sticks and crowned with wild foliage. It felt part festival and part pagan site of worship. In the afternoon leading up to the show on Sunday evening, he posted pictures on his Instagram Stories of a burning wicker man and a pagan ritual. An inherent part of Lee McQueen’s vocabulary, the former was also a reference to the film The Wicker Man, from which McGirr drew inspiration, along with the founder’s Spring/Summer 2003 show. “It was really that girl and that show: snatched and short but relaxed at the same time; things that felt undone but structured.”
ALEXANDER MCQUEEN
Said girl made her way around the circular runway in skin-baring silhouettes. Little military jackets, suits and denim bodies paired with matching skirts flaunted breast- and hipbones through cuts and necklines that evoked McQueen’s Highland Rape slashing. His ultra–low-rise bumster trousers from 1993 were revived in jeans and skirts with back cleavage sometimes adorned—if can you “adorn” a sacral cleft—with hardware-embellished thongs. Christina Aguilera circa 2002 would have swooned and dropped it low. Maybe that energy was what McGirr meant by “febrile.” Watching the news these days, you feel like there’s a constant full moon hovering over us, making everyone crazy. That’s kind of pagan, too.
“It’s celebrating women’s bodies. Everything was really washed and twisted around the body to feel really snatched-in. The whole season, while I was working on it with my team, there was this idea of being snatched but ‘soupy’, which is a stupid word I coined during the season. Soupiness is when you’re snatched on the lower and relaxed on the top. It just felt right,” McGirr said. Within his proposals, however, there was a lot of consideration. At McQueen, he’s tapping into a current youth spirit for debauchery and dark romanticism similarly practiced at Glenn Martens’ sleazy, dystopian Diesel and by fashion goth star Dilara Findikoglu in London. If he can get the kids on board, it’s a smart move.
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