Backstage after his third Paris fashion week show, Dublin-born Seán McGirr, 36, was asked whether he was growing in confidence as the designer of Alexander McQueen. “I guess so?” he replied, with an emphasis on the question mark. “I spend so much time with the incredible atelier.
Really getting into it, you know? So, I guess so.” The clothes spoke with more self-assurance than McGirr took credit for. The setting was the Royal Cabinet of Natural History, built in 1785 as part of the Natural History Museum in Paris, a room catwalk-shaped but Dickens-coded – a tall, narrow alleyway heavy with wooden cabinets, which once showcased scientific curiosities from all over the world.
The entrance to the runway was a dazzling glass corridor from which the models appeared before stepping on to the wooden floor, as if emerging from a hall of mirrors. McGirr’s starting point for the season was Night Walks, Charles Dickens’ autobiographical essay recounting nocturnal walks taken through London while suffering from insomnia. Not an obvious aesthetic reference, but a perfect one at a house where Lee McQueen’s very first collection was named Jack The Ripper Stalks His Victims.
The show began with black tailoring, strict yet fine-boned so that the models walked with fluid grace, casting exaggerated silhouettes with pinched shoulders and proud collars, high armholes and narrow waists in inky twill wool. “McQueen is about a waist,” said McGirr, adding that he had “taken pi.
