I have a problem with Alexander McQueen.

I keep looking at the pictures.

Not in the normal scroll, like, save, move on way. I mean properly looking. Going back. Zooming in. Staring at that horn. Looking at the satin. Looking at the ridiculous volume of that skirt and thinking, okay, but why does this actually make sense?

Because McQueen has always had this strange ability to make fashion feel slightly dangerous. Even when the clothes are beautiful, there is usually something lurking underneath them. A little violence. A little romance. Something wounded. Something that might bite.

And this collection understands that language.

But what surprised me is how much of it doesn’t need to scream.

The show begins with the body being contained. Tailoring becomes a kind of armour — precise, controlled, almost severe — but then the clothes start opening themselves up. A pinstripe suit reveals the body underneath. The waist becomes a point of tension. Skin interrupts the tailoring. The structure is there, but it isn’t entirely holding.

And then there is the horn.

Oh boy.

The horned headpiece could have been pure McQueen theatre — the sort of thing you see once, photograph immediately and never think about again. Except it keeps coming back. And by the time it appears on the simplest black dress in the collection, something rather clever has happened.

It no longer feels like a costume.

It feels like identity.

That distinction matters.

Because when the horn is surrounded by all the other noise, you can read it as spectacle. When it is stripped back, sitting above an otherwise restrained silhouette, it becomes stranger. More intimate. Almost unsettling.

Like the woman isn’t wearing the creature.

She is the creature.

And then the collection starts doing something I really love: it takes ideas that could have been one-off theatrics and gives them a life of their own.

Take the pastel print.

At first, it is compressed against the body, almost like a second skin. Soft yellow, blue and peach, painterly and strangely innocent. Then suddenly — WHAM — the same visual language returns inflated into an enormous taffeta silhouette.

Same idea.

Completely different pressure.

The body goes from concealed to enormous.

From whispered to theatrical.

And that is where the collection really clicks for me. It isn’t simply making clothes bigger for the sake of drama. It is allowing the silhouette to become the emotional progression.

What was once held close is suddenly everywhere.

And then there are those metallic floral constructions.

Silver leaves. Black flowers. Sheer mesh. Metallic surfaces catching the light like fragments of armour. They feel almost archaeological and futuristic at the same time, which is a difficult combination to pull off without wandering into costume territory.

Here, they somehow sit together.

The clothes feel romantic, gothic and slightly alien.

Which, frankly, is quite a combination.

And then comes that oil-slick, iridescent fabric — magenta, green, almost liquid-looking. It feels like the collection briefly leaves the gothic world it has built and takes a trip somewhere more futuristic. It shouldn’t necessarily belong.

But it does.

And perhaps that’s because McQueen has never really been interested in making the comfortable choice.

There is something else happening here, too.

The collection knows when to stop.

The ruffled tulle that erupts from the tailoring early on doesn’t become the entire language of the show. The lace veils disappear. Some of the ideas are introduced, allowed to make their point and then left behind.

And I actually like that.

Fashion can be terribly afraid of editing itself. Once we’ve found an idea that photographs well, suddenly we need twelve versions of it.

More horns.

More feathers.

More lace.

More drama.

MORE EVERYTHING.

But McQueen is more interesting when it doesn’t do that.

The final silhouettes understand volume without becoming desperate for attention. Feathered structures sit around the body. Skirts become almost architectural. A black column grows these strange wing-like extensions around the hips.

The clothes aren’t quiet.

But they aren’t begging either.

And that, somehow, is what stayed with me.

Because the collection seems to be asking whether McQueen’s old language of armour, transformation, beauty and violence can still exist without simply recreating the past.

Can myth evolve?

Can a house built on spectacle find new ways of creating tension?

Can something be recognisably McQueen without becoming a museum of McQueen?

I don’t think this collection answers all of that.

And honestly, I’m glad it doesn’t.

What it does give us is something more interesting: evidence of a vocabulary being built.

The horn.

The exposed body.

The sculptural silhouette.

The embellishment becoming construction rather than decoration.

The print moving from skin to volume.

The metallic surfaces.

The tension between delicacy and aggression.

These things begin to talk to each other.

And suddenly I’m back to the photographs again.

That pink satin.

That absurd skirt.

That strange little creature staring straight through the camera.

The black gown.

The silver.

The softness.

The armour.

The monster.

Maybe that is the McQueen trick.

You think you’re looking at fashion.

Then, somewhere between the first look and the last, you realise you’re looking at a person trying to become something else.

And you’re still not entirely sure whether she’s transforming into the monster…

or finally becoming herself.