The world of McQueen has always existed in the space between poetry and provocation, and for Fall/Winter 2025, that liminal space feels alive with fire. The campaign, directed and lensed by Glen Luchford, isn’t just a series of images—it’s a performance captured in stillness. Bodies bend, twist, and fracture against light that flickers like a ghostly flame, illuminating the beauty of tension itself. Each frame hums with a sense of freedom, as if liberation has been caught mid-breath.
This is fashion as movement, as language, as rebellion.
The Ghosts Behind the Vision
At the heart of the collection is creative director Seán McGirr’s fascination with Victorian rebels—figures who challenged the very fabric of identity and expression. Their shadows linger here: Oscar Wilde, with his wit sharpened into weaponry; Vesta Tilley, the celebrated male impersonator who played with gender long before it was fashionable to discuss; and Romaine Brooks, the unapologetic painter who lived her truth in a society that sought to restrain her.
McGirr doesn’t simply reference these icons—he resurrects their daring, weaving their defiance into the seams and folds of his designs. The result is a collection that feels haunted, not by nostalgia, but by the restless spirits of those who refused to conform.
Fashion in Tension
The McQueen Fall/Winter 2025 campaign thrives on opposition. Tradition collides with transgression. Restraint clashes with abandon. Masculine and feminine blur until the lines disappear, replaced by something altogether more fluid, more instinctive.
It is clothing that doesn’t just dress the body but challenges it—urging it to move, to stretch, to claim space unapologetically. In Luchford’s lens, models don’t pose; they inhabit. They arch and fall, expand and contract, as if testing the limits of what identity can hold.
Faces of the Campaign
The casting underscores this spirit of bold experimentation. Alex Consani, Athiec Geng, Chu Wong, and Libby Taverner become vessels of McGirr’s vision, each one distinct yet bound by the campaign’s shared language of energy. Styled by Sarah Richardson and with art direction by Christopher Simmonds, they appear less like models and more like characters in a living narrative—a gothic chorus singing of defiance, beauty, and desire.
There’s nothing passive in their presence. Every glance, every gesture feels like an act of resistance, a refusal to simply blend into the shadows.
The Clothes That Speak
The garments themselves tell the collection’s truest story. Silk georgette flows like whispered secrets, rippling with a weightless elegance that softens the edge of rebellion. Sharp tailoring cuts through the air like a blade, precise and unforgiving, a reminder that discipline and daring often share the same line.
Then there’s the black lacquered leather—structured, commanding, impossible to ignore. It feels like armor, but armor worn not to hide but to confront. Against this darkness, flashes of scarlet and molten orange erupt, like sparks striking stone, like rebellion catching flame.
Together, these elements form more than outfits—they form a language of instinct and emotion, garments that don’t just cover but declare.
Beyond a Seasonal Statement
What elevates this campaign is its refusal to be contained by season or trend. McGirr isn’t offering fleeting style—he’s interrogating identity itself, prodding at the edges of gender, beauty, and idealism. The work asks not just what we wear, but why we wear it. Who do we become in silk? Who do we become in leather? What happens when the boundaries dissolve?
Luchford’s imagery captures this tension perfectly, a dance between shadow and radiance where nothing feels entirely fixed. Like the Victorian rebels who haunt the collection, the campaign insists on fluidity, on multiplicity, on the refusal to be reduced.
McQueen’s Ongoing Dialogue
Alexander McQueen, as a house, has always embraced the disruptive. Under McGirr, that legacy feels not only preserved but recharged. The Fall/Winter 2025 campaign is proof that McQueen is less about fashion in the traditional sense and more about creating spaces for confrontation and self-invention.
It’s a continuation of a dialogue that began decades ago: what does it mean to dress the body when the body itself is a site of conflict, of expression, of liberation?
A Season That Burns Bright
In the end, McQueen’s Fall/Winter 2025 campaign doesn’t whisper; it blazes. It is silk and shadow, leather and light, rebellion dressed in scarlet. It’s Wilde’s wit turned into tailoring, Brooks’ defiance cut into silhouette, Tilley’s play with gender sewn into seams.
It asks us to not just look, but to feel—to let the imagery unsettle us, to let the clothes move us, to see fashion not as mere fabric but as a living, breathing force.
This season, McQueen doesn’t just show us clothing. It shows us liberation.
