McQueen Pre-Fall 2025 Ad Campaign

Review of McQueen Pre-Fall 2025 Ad Campaign by Creative Director Christopher Simmonds and Photographer Theo Sion with models Jacqui Hooper, Dru Campbell, Finn Collins, Libby Bennett, and Song Ah Woo

Alexander McQueen’s Spring 2025 campaign, shot by Theo Sion, draws its gaze to the storied streets of Soho, paying tribute to a layered lineage of London’s creative undercurrent. It’s a place of mythology and grit—once home to Francis Bacon, Lucian Freud, and other countercultural icons—and here becomes a suitably textured backdrop for Sarah Burton’s final vision of urban elegance. The campaign echoes McQueen’s historic tension between subversion and polish, inviting viewers into a world that feels both cinematic and close.

Shot largely at The Coach & Horses, an iconic Soho pub steeped in bohemian history, the visuals evoke a chiaroscuro blend of Victorian drama and streetwise swagger. Models cut through pub interiors and city pavements in sharply tailored silhouettes—square shoulders, shrunken waists, and exaggerated proportions nod to both Edwardian formality and punk irreverence. There’s a democratic mix of characters: a woman in tartan with ruffled cuffs stands beside an older man in wide-brimmed white; a sharp-faced model steps confidently into a pub doorway trailing crystal fringe and lacquered eyeliner. The visual language feels as much about attitude as attire.

Where the campaign succeeds is in its texture—both literal and narrative. McQueen’s signature juxtapositions are at play: lace with nylon, kilts with bomber jackets, Old World embroidery with industrial austerity. The casting and setting—real London characters like Soho George and Florence Joelle included—underscore the brand’s embrace of eccentricity and independence. There’s a defiant intelligence at work here, aligning well with McQueen’s ethos of beauty carved from discomfort. That said, a few of the compositions feel overly orchestrated, flirting with artifice in moments where spontaneity would have been more potent. The mood, while striking, could benefit from a touch more looseness—more movement, more breath.

Still, the campaign delivers a layered, textural homage to London’s cultural strata—a cityscape of rebellion wrapped in tailoring. It’s less about spectacle than storytelling, and more about presence than posture.

In a world increasingly scrubbed of its edges, McQueen reminds us that the most stylish souls are often the strangest ones in the room.