McQueen creative director Seán McGirr is leaving his post at the Kering-owned house after three years.
“I would like to thank Seán for his contribution and dedication to Alexander McQueen,” Kering CEO Luca de Meo said in a statement on Thursday. “Our ambition is to establish a bold new direction for the house, building on its unique heritage of exceptional tailoring, uncompromising creativity and rebellion to reaffirm its position as one of the most innovative and culturally relevant voices in luxury.”
“I want to thank Seán personally for everything he has brought to Alexander McQueen,” McQueen president and CEO Gianfranco D’Attis said. “Over the past three years, he has approached the house with great respect for its history while expressing his own vision. His talent and passion have helped us reconnect Alexander McQueen with London, its culture, and its extraordinary creative energy. I am deeply grateful to Seán and to the teams for their commitment, creativity, and contribution to the house.”
The house will soon announce its new creative leadership, according to the release. The new creative director will make their debut in London, where the house relocated its shows for SS27. “We are very much committed to showing in London from here on,” D’Attis told Vogue Business in September.
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McGirr was appointed creative director of McQueen in October 2023. Before that, the Irish designer, born in 1987, was head of ready-to-wear at JW Anderson. His resume also includes roles as women’s designer for Dries Van Noten, as well as positions at Uniqlo and Burberry.
At McQueen, McGirr stepped into the shoes of Sarah Burton, who spent 26 years at the brand and 13 as creative director, earning plaudits for balancing the brand’s couture ethos with a strong ready-to-wear offer. McGirr’s work was rooted in legacy, with a younger attitude.
His debut show for Alexander McQueen took place in a warehouse space on the outskirts of Paris, evoking “the rawness of the original venue, a derelict rave warehouse in London’s Kings Cross where McQueen had shown The Birds,” Vogue.com’s chief critic Sarah Mower wrote. His collection, which included exaggerated neck knits, shearling jackets, and jet-beaded pantsuits, met with skepticism, straying far from Burton’s work and aiming for a younger audience with a less tailored silhouette.
Looks from Seán McGirr’s debut show.
His second show, staged at the École des Beaux-Arts, was “more cohesive and more commercially viable,” Vogue Runway and Vogue Business global director Nicole Phelps wrote.
His SS27 collection, presented in the undercroft of Lincoln’s Inn Chapel in London beneath the Gothic ceiling, embraced darkness through closed-over shoulders built to resemble furled angel wings, classic gowns with anarchic enhancements and twin-peaked hairstyles.
McGirr stated on Thursday: “My vision for Alexander McQueen was grounded in the interplay between raw, visceral, human beauty and the precision and rigor at the heart of the house. I am incredibly proud of the progressive energy we cultivated as a team, anchoring our creativity in contemporary culture, and seeing it resonate with the most forthright, expressive figures across art, music, cinema, and more.”
The news of his departure comes as McQueen underwent a restructuring earlier this year that involved job cuts and executive changes. D’Attis became CEO on June 3.
At Kering Capital Markets Day that took place in Florence on April 16, De Meo spoke about a go-forward strategy for McQueen that includes 50% fewer stores by the end of 2026 (compared with the end of 2025) and rightsizing all functions.
“ One of the problems of Kering was that we were treating all the brands the same way, independently of the nature of the brand itself,” de Meo told reporters at the group’s Capital Markets Day. “You take a brand like McQueen, which is by nature a very niche, edgy, avant-garde [house]. And then you start opening shops and doing accessible products. This is not McQueen. I need to go back to the source of McQueen, which is occasion wear, tailoring, gowns, some funky accessories, etc.”
He added that it is about finding the right structure to enable McQueen to sustain a more limited business scope by leveraging synergies with the group. “I probably need to structure within Kering, a platform that is more adapted to accommodate brands below 300 million in turnover because we have been relatively bad at integrating small brands,” he said.
Kering doesn’t break down sales of individual houses except Gucci, but according to Bernstein estimates, the house generated less than €200 million in 2025, down sharply from a peak of €850 million during the post-pandemic luxury boom in 2022/2023.
During the group’s H1 earnings call at the end of July, de Meo said that McQueen is “executing its transformation plan focused on simplification and operational discipline,” noting that it closed 20 stores in the first half.
Kering is to publish its third-quarter earnings on October 22. Creative changes are likely to be on the agenda of the earnings call as Saint Laurent, the second largest house in Kering’s portfolio, has yet to appoint a new creative director following the departure of Anthony Vaccarello after a decade at the helm.
“I leave with profound gratitude for the dedication of the studio and atelier, and craftspeople. I look forward to my next chapter and wish the house every success,” McGirr also said in Thursday’s statement.