McQueen SS25 Turns the Irish Banshee Into Crystal
In his second outing for the House, designer Seán McGirr envisioned a folkloric fashion brigade of washed silk organza, cobweb lace, British mohair and silver bullion embroidery.
On Saturday evening, Seán McGirr showed his sophomore collection for Alexander McQueen inside Paris École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts. There, Tom Scott built a purposefully tense installation—a steel-plate path poking out from a monolithic structure and from under crushed tiles—for the visionary’s banshee-inspired Spring 2025 designs to meet the world.
“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,” said the Irish designer, who remembers his mother talking about the folkloric spirit’s cries of solitary as a child. “For me, she has come to represent something real and potent now.“
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To a soundtrack of British artists from all different decades and genres, McGirr’s grand fashion manifesto made sense. In mode, the collection included tailoring subverts of the British suit, hand-stitched cobweb lace details, pinched and heightened shoulders, cursive collars on Jermyn Street shirting and mohair silhouettes woven in British mills.
McGirr employed hand-treated silks, including jacquard-woven washed silk organza and silk creponne in myriad muted tones, to create his shining eveningwear: royal lapels on blazers and form-flattering torsos on fluffy dresses included. Embroidery, meanwhile, landed on coats and gowns alike, with original banshee artwork reshaped via silver metal sequins, silver bullion and 3D gold metal detailing on an organza base.
The line’s final look—a glistening, crystal-covered creature—was the banshee personified, an allegorical “guiding force” for the future of what McGirr’s Alexander McQueen will become.
See Alexander McQueen’s Spring/Summer 2025 collection in the gallery above, and stay tuned to Hypebeast for more Paris Fashion Week coverage.
