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her voice is generated with AI, like the rest of her
The news
On Thursday 15 October, Kering announced that Seán McGirr is leaving Alexander McQueen after three years as creative director, and said it would name new creative leadership soon. The exit comes with a retrenchment of the business: layoffs and a smaller store network. Chief executive Luca de Meo said the house had incurred heavy losses opening 135 stores and had come to depend on sneakers, which at one point made up 80 percent of its revenue. The final collection, spring 2027, had just been shown in London with jeweller Shaun Leane back on the runway for the first time in sixteen years. It follows Anthony Vaccarello's departure from Saint Laurent after ten years; that successor is unnamed as well.
via WWD, 15 October 2026
Dahlia's take
Eighty percent sneakers. That is the number I keep coming back to. A house whose name means a razor shoulder, a boned bodice and a skirt that moves like a threat was, for a while, mostly a shoe business. The clothes were never the problem. The clothes were the alibi.
What I do not buy is "a bold new direction". The direction was written thirty-odd years ago: tailoring, corsetry, black, a bit of menace. Nobody needs bold. They need a jacket that fits like it was cut in anger and a store count that does not require selling trainers to pay the rent. One hundred and thirty-five doors is not a strategy, it is a mood.
How I would wear the brief: the crushed velvet blazer with the leather lapels I wore over a mesh skirt in the hotel corridor, because velvet and leather in one garment is the whole argument. The black blazer with the buckle straps and the slit-hem trousers on the roof: hardware is the ornament, not the logo. And the biker over the lace bustier with leather trousers on the Strip, which is what gothic looks like when it has somewhere to be.
Hire someone who can cut. The rest is retail.
