Is Alexander McQueen still ‘anti-polite’?
"McQueen SS25," available through DAZED, courtesy of Alexander McQueen. © All rights belong to their respective owners. No copyright infringement intended.
To paraphrase writer Lili Anolik, ours is an age of hypocrites and hall monitors. What does this mean for fashion? Under a new creative director, is the historically ‘controversial’ Alexander McQueen still capable of challenging the norm?
When clicking through the pictures from the McQueen SS25 show, the first thought that comes to mind is that Seán McGirr has sorted the tailoring out since his debut. Billowing white chiffon shirt, tucked into a pair of black trousers, acid yellow trainers. Everyone largely agrees that McGirr was, in 2024, taking on a rough gig. Playing to a tough crowd. Had big boots to fill. Khaki green trench coat with a suede collar. Enormous black pirate boots.
Lee McQueen made collections that were tailored with sinister and maniacal precision. The process of making the clothes was a kind of sartorial perversion; Lee would be using the same skills he learnt as an apprentice on the prestigious Savile Row to make the notorious ‘bumster’ in the late 90s. His collections were brainy, politically provocative, hellbent on actually distressing the show’s attendees. I am mentally clicking through images of models from the Highland Rape in 1995, an exquisitely angry show communicating the brutality of the masculine libido over feminine culture, the brutality of the English imperial regime over Scotland. Tattered tartan, stumbling out in kitten heels, iridescent mesh top torn.
Taking over from the beloved and extraordinarily talented Sarah Burton, McGirr is the first creative director of the brand that didn’t directly work with Lee. After Lee’s suicide in 2010, his right-hand Burton would tease out the Savile Row training in the identity of the fashion house, bringing it to the forefront. McQueen, then, went through a really long period of seriously dressing royals and not even making fun of them. (The urban legend of the working class Saville Row apprentice Lee stitching the secret message ‘I AM A C*NT’ into a blazer for King Charles–then, a prince–comes to mind.)
Burton was dressing royals for so long it sort of subsumed McQueen entirely into the boundaries of the ‘respectable’; a transition that arguably started in 2003, when Lee himself was honored for his contribution to British fashion, named Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE). Given how anti-establishment he was, this accolade feels kind of like a hilarious misunderstanding. Alexander Lee McQueen, ‘the hooligan of English fashion’, (CBE).
I’m now looking at McGirr’s debut collection. Black latex dress worn with the model’s hands trapped in pockets across her chest. Click. Jeans tied around the legs with wire. Click. Scowling model, shaved head, in a dress that resembles the hood of a cobalt blue car. This third look is a reference to the Dublin-born McGirr’s working class roots, his father’s job as a mechanic.
McGirr, on this collection, for GQ back in March 2024: ‘I'm into this idea of anti-politeness, because we live in a very polite world at the moment, and so [McQueen’s] message is more relevant than ever.’ His statement sort of acknowledges how weird the past years of McQueen have been. It’s not that his predecessor Burton’s designs themselves were ‘polite’ per se. They pushed forward the sense of the folkloric and fairytaleish in McQueen's imagery; they were always proof of innovative, crisp tailoring, and more than anything, Burton was bent on putting women in clothing that made them look imposing and powerful. What is weird for the house; what is in fact polite, is the fact that the brand essentially became the royal label of choice after its namesake’s death.
I can’t quite decide if I’d call McGirr’s designs impolite. In that debut collection, the first thing you notice is that McGirr hasn’t carried on Burton’s anatomically detailed tailoring. That could be seen as impolite, I suppose, but I’m not entirely convinced. The venue of the show was probably a bit impolite; a freezing warehouse on an unseasonably rainy March evening. The clothes are edgy, jagged, the colours mainly bruised purples, denims, blacks or metallics. The black latex dress reminds us of Lee’s 1999 show. The enormous knits remind us of The Overlook show, also 1999. The chunky statement footwear is back.
Reader, the reason why I can’t figure out if McGirr’s designs are impolite or not is because I can’t imagine who they would possibly offend. Lee’s collections were offensive, shocking to anybody who came to see the shows. If you were unwilling to parse the braininess of the Highland Rape; to sift through its troubling iconography and accept your own uneasiness at the representation of colonial brutality through models playing brutalised women, you would be offended by Lee. If you believed in models having jobs, the show featuring a hologram of Kate Moss instead of the model, you’d be offended by Lee. If you didn’t think Prince Charles was a c*nt, you’d be offended by Lee.
And so, back to the most recent show; SS25. Cinched suit trailing delicate spiderweb lace, a metal comb dangling from the belt loops. Click. Click. Click. The final look of the show: bedazzled banshee gown; diaphanous, silvery, draped over the model’s face. I dully register that after the hundredth-or-so reference to an old Lee McQueen show, the nostalgic appeal of this has pretty much disappeared for me.
The Guardian recalls Lee on the topic of who will follow him as director: “If I ever leave my company, I’ll burn it down so that no one can work there. This person would have to invent the concepts for my shows, which are so personal, how would that be possible?”
McGirr’s designs raise questions about what a fashion house becomes after its namesake dies. What actually is the duty of a new creative director? The answer probably follows the same logic as a film adaptation of a groundbreaking book; something like ‘retain essence of original while injecting life into said essence’, etc. Problem is, we’re dealing with Lee McQueen here. I don’t know if making each show a nostalgic romp through McQueen’s 90s Hits is actually retaining Lee’s essence. The braver way for McGirr to have done it might have been to assert what ‘anti-politeness’ is to him, what it means for us now; as opposed to what it was for Lee back in the 90s. Because, as Lee showed us, there is great merit to being genuinely sartorially impolite; impoliteness exposes hypocrisies and injustices. It pushes fashion to intellectual and associative extremes. In the form of McQueen, it sharpened and fostered a sartorial language that is, as we have seen, impossible to imitate. The only way forward is to make up new words and to speak them.
