Alexander McQueen

Alexander McQueen is a British luxury house founded in 1992 by Lee Alexander McQueen, a Savile Row-trained tailor who turned fashion shows into theatre. It has been owned by Kering since 2000. Technical tailoring and outright spectacle come out of the same building.

Lee McQueen apprenticed on Savile Row before he ever staged a show, and the cutting discipline behind the theatre is what separated his work from anyone imitating it. The commercial house today runs largely on footwear and accessories. The tailoring is the part with the Savile Row training behind it.

Behind the brand

History of Alexander McQueen

Lee McQueen left school at sixteen and apprenticed at Anderson & Sheppard and Gieves & Hawkes on Savile Row, then worked in theatrical costume before taking an MA at Central Saint Martins. Isabella Blow bought his entire 1992 graduate collection, in instalments, and became his advocate and his muse.

His shows through the 1990s were built like stage productions. He was made head designer at Givenchy in 1996 at twenty-seven while running his own label, and he won British Designer of the Year four times. His collections are now studied as much for their staging as for their clothes.

The set pieces still get taught. The 1999 finale in which two robot arms spray-painted a dress on the spinning model Shalom Harlow, the 2006 hologram of Kate Moss floating in glass, and the Plato’s Atlantis collection with its curved Armadillo shoe all live in fashion’s memory. The clothes were never only spectacle, because underneath the theatre was a tailor who could cut.

Gucci Group, now Kering, took a majority stake in 2000. Lee McQueen died in London in February 2010, at the age of 40. Sarah Burton, his long-time head of womenswear, took the studio and held it for thirteen years. She designed the dress Catherine Middleton wore at the 2011 royal wedding. That dress put the house in front of an audience it had never reached. Seán McGirr, previously head of ready-to-wear at JW Anderson, took over as creative director in 2023.

The Oversized sneaker and the skull scarf

The Oversized sneaker carries the accessories business and is one of the most recognizable designer shoes of the past decade. Sarah Burton introduced it in 2015, a white leather low-top on an exaggerated rubber sole, and it became a default luxury sneaker for years. The Tread Slick lug-sole boot extended the same idea into winter.

The skull is the house’s other commercial signature. Lee McQueen introduced the skull-print silk scarf in the mid-2000s, and it has run across the scarves, the rings and the clutches ever since. The scarf is the most common way people buy into the brand, and it is the accessory most worth authenticating before you buy secondhand. We cover the footwear in our guides to the best sneakers for women and the best white sneakers for women.

The tailoring

The tailoring is what the founder was trained to do. McQueen jackets are cut with a narrow, high armhole and a strongly defined shoulder. That cut is hard to execute, and it gives them a shape most brands cannot copy from a photograph. The low-rise “bumster” trouser that made his early reputation still shows up in the house’s proportions.

Craftsmanship and materials

The Savile Row discipline is legible in the clothes. Leather goods and footwear are made in Italy, and the ready-to-wear is produced in Italy and the United Kingdom. The house keeps its own atelier in London, where the embroidery and the hand-finishing on the runway pieces are done. Those show pieces are not for sale, but they set the standard the commercial line is measured against.

Where to buy Alexander McQueen

Alexander McQueen sells through its own stores, its official site, department stores and luxury etailers such as Neiman Marcus. Wholesale distribution is wide, so seasonal discounting on footwear and ready-to-wear is common, and end-of-season sales are a genuine entry point. Buy the sneakers from an authorized retailer, since they are among the more heavily counterfeited designer shoes.

Who wears Alexander McQueen

The house draws two different buyers. One comes for the Oversized sneaker and the skull scarf, entry pieces that read as designer without needing much fashion knowledge. The other comes for the tailoring and the eveningwear, the sharp jacket and the sculptural dress that trace straight back to Lee McQueen’s cutting. The runway pieces still turn up on red carpets and in music videos. That keeps the drama attached to a brand most people first meet through a shoe.

Alexander McQueen price

The house prices alongside its Kering stablemates. The Oversized sneaker runs in the high hundreds, small leather goods and scarves in the mid hundreds, and tailoring into the low thousands. Most buyers go for the shoe, but the tailoring is where the Savile Row training shows.