McGIRR'S MCQUEEN

A year ago, Seán McGirr came out of nowhere to lead Alexander McQueen, one of fashion's most storied and emotionally charged houses. Hayley Maitland meets the genial young Irishman writing McQueen's next chapter.

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There's been nothing but rain all week in Paris-it's rained until every plane tree in the Tuileries shed its leavesbut on the night Seán McGirr presents his spring 2025 collection for Alexander McQueen across the Seine from the Louvre, the city is bathed in a golden September light. Perhaps that's helping the 36-year-old Dubliner-plucked from the JW Anderson studio less than a year ago-look so composed as he takes François-Henri Pinault, chairman and CEO of the Kering group, which owns McQueen, through rail after rail of heritage designs and explains, in his gentle Irish lilt, how he's contorted them: Jermyn Street tuxedos with curlicue lapels; communion dresses in provocative, translucent crepe; rugby tops made camp with Etonian frills.

Then again, perhaps McGirr's air of calm is merely relative. With less than 20 minutes until showtime in the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts, the paparazzi calls accompanying each VIP arrival echo around the neoclassical courtyard. Backstage, McQueen staffers with pincushion armbands are moving so quickly that the tape measures thrown over their shoulders trail behind them like streamers; models in bathrobes stand to attention; and, in a corner of the room, embroiderers are trimming the silver threads of the banshee headdress that will close the show.

Even amid the tumult, this last detail is arresting at once a tribute to London's nocturnal rebels and a nod to Alexander "Lee" McQueen's own banshees from his fall 1994 presentationhis second-ever runway show-at the Café de Paris nightclub in Leicester Square. Tonight, though, there are more security personnel guarding the École's towering wrought-iron gates than there were showgoers three decades ago. I step outside just as Salma Hayek arrives, the paparazzi flashes making a disco ball of her sequin dress in the gloaming-and when I return, McGirr has slipped away backstage to steel himself for the industry's judgment.