On Saturday, the still-new Alexander McQueen creative director Seán McGirr presented his second collection on Paris’s left bank. This offering was rooted in a rawly emotional concept: he looked to Lee McQueen’s autumn/winter 1994 show “Banshee,” which opened with two pregnant women walking to the screams of Irish fairy women, mourning a death that is soon to come.
“The banshee is rooted in the history of McQueen, but it’s also a story that I grew up with, so it feels deeply personal to me—something I remember my mother talking about in Ireland, describing the cry of this solitary, foreboding figure,” McGirr explained backstage. This emotive memory, along with McGirr’s own more optimistic interpretation of this mournful, haunting but powerful figure, form the basis of a collection that is both more romantic and beautifully wearable than his debut. “[The banshee] has come to represent something real and potent now,” he says. “The idea of someone who is feeling and forthright; someone who can be seen as a guiding force.”
This came to life with dark, twisted (literally, with fabric contorting) tailoring. The opening looks gave us foreboding and sharply executed suiting and dresses, layered over Elizabethan collared shirting and raw-edge heritage lace. McGirr played with McQueen’s use of the S-bend—the straight-front corset popular in the early 1900s. Constriction took several forms, with houndstooth jackets turning into themselves. A gorgeous silk lemon organza dress was a highlight, striking with the deep romanticism we have come to expect from the house of McQueen, but given lightness. The final look, an otherworldly gown made of silver chains wrapping from the head down the body, packed a visual punch.
