Sean McGirr debuts experimentally at Alexander McQueen

Alexander McQueen once staged a show in a garbage incinerator plant along the Thames. Sean McGirr staged his impressive debut for the house on Saturday night inside a scruffy former railway depot in Paris’ Chinatown.

Those were not the only similarities. Dublin-born McGirr’s debut partly referenced McQueen’s ‘Birds’ collection, though his fashion flight was a far more optimistic vision than the theatricality of Lee.
 
Where Alexander (Lee) McQueen often referenced his Scottish ancestry with references to bloody battles, McGirr played on his Irish origins with Enya on the soundtrack singing ‘Orinoco Falls’. Sean left acid green blankets on every seat due to the exposed drafty setting and teaming rain outside which marked the mood. Lee would probably have chosen black.

The weight of expectations was, of course, enormous. When Lee McQueen passed in 2010, he was widely regarded as the single most influential designer in the world. McGirr had been plucked from obscurity after stints working for JW Anderson and Uniqlo to succeed the much loved Sarah Burton, Lee’s former right hand woman, who went on to design McQueen for 13 years, and dress Kate Middleton when she married Prince William.
 
From the opening look, the silhouettes and fabrics looked very McQueen, in a show boasting plenty of signature experimental perversity. The opening look was a distorted cocktail laminate jersey, while several lassies wore thick mohair funnel-neck sweater dresses that hid their heads. McGirr hitting the highest note with smashed chandeliers dresses that were pretty sensational.
 
Bizarrely, though the fabrics felt lighter than many previous McQueen shows, the show finished in a trio of pawn-shaped metal dresses, in Lamborghini yellow or Aston Martin blue. A riff on McGirr’s father’s profession – he is a mechanic.

In a co-ed show, the tailoring echoed Burton’s style, though far more streamlined – Savile Row dandy meeting the East End gangster, with chalk stripe suits and secret agent leather coats.   
 
Lee’s love of cable knits and whaler’s sweaters was reinterpreted by Sean in Irish aran sweaters, and that bit more thrown together – knitted bras with open cardigans. In fact, some of the most powerful looks were the quadruple collar inverted Michelin man cable sweaters.
 
One did miss the intricate elegance of Burton’s exotic taffeta gowns, but McGirr’s vision is definitely a younger, edgier McQueen 
 
In the build-up to his debut, McGirr had telegraphed his intentions with a selection of images on Instagram. They featured Lee McQueen veteran models Frankie Rayder and Debra Shaw wearing silver skull masks, rambling about a leafy autumnal English forest.
 
Both of them walked the remains of a railway track that was the catwalk in the show. Rayner in a red enveloping dress, and Shaw a peak-shoulder pant suit.
 
“The narrative was about singular characters, who have a very strong personality. People I’d be curious to meet. The rough glamor of the East End, the tattered opulence. My job is to bring a new energy to that. I am into the idea of anti-politeness, we live in a very polite world, so Lee’s message is more relevant than ever,” he explained post show.

Some 40 editors and reviewers crowded around McGirr, a healthy sign, who, when asked how he planned to celebrate, joked, “a hug from my mother, which will be intense, and maybe a hot bath.”
 
After his parents had posed for photos with Sean, they were greeted by Kering executive Lionel Vermeil.
 
“I am the one responsible for launching your son to greatness,” Vermeil informed them with a sniff, with McQueen CEO Gianfilippo Testa standing nearby.
 
When McGirr senior responded by enquiring what he thought of the collection, Vermeil replied: “Well, nobody died. But I am French, so don’t expect me to say much.”
 
On that note, one exited the show.