Alexander McQueen staged its first London Fashion Week show in 25 years on September 20, and actor Lola Tung was among the recognizable faces watching from the front row as the brand marked its long-awaited homecoming.
The spring/summer 2027 show, held in the vaulted Undercroft of Lincoln's Inn Chapel in Holborn, was creative director Seán McGirr's first McQueen presentation in London since he took over the house in 2023. McQueen was founded in the city by Lee Alexander McQueen in 1992, but the label shifted its runway calendar to Paris after Gucci Group's investment in the brand around 2001, staying there for a quarter century until this weekend's show.
Lola Tung arriving at the Alexander McQueen SS27 show at London Fashion Week! ✨ pic.twitter.com/EIYAfrQaIJ
— lola tung things (@lolatungthings) September 20, 2026
Tung sat alongside a lineup that included Emilia Clarke, Emma Corrin, Salma Hayek, Florence Welch and Alexa Chung, according to coverage from the Irish News and TheIndustry.fashion. The Summer I Turned Pretty star has become an increasingly familiar face on the international fashion-week circuit this year, having sat front row at shows including Miu Miu and Tory Burch, and her presence at McQueen's return adds another marquee name to a night the British Fashion Council had been building toward for months.
McGirr's collection leaned into the tension between London's formal traditions and its underground scene, pairing sharp tailoring, structured shoulders and slim waists with rave-inspired dressing, washed neon and leather harnesses. Smoked tulle and a palette drawn from religious portraiture ran through the eveningwear, with the show closing on a finale McGirr described as "angels in the dark." Speaking after the presentation, the designer said the city's identity was central to the collection: "McQueen is a London-born house, and the city's uncompromising attitude and subversive spirit sit at its very heart."
Lola Tung at McQueen's London Fashion Week return after 25 years away. pic.twitter.com/r4uCV9A8kQ
— Thought Catalog (@ThoughtCatalog) September 21, 2026
The return has been read as a significant moment for London Fashion Week's standing among the major fashion capitals. British Fashion Council chief executive Laura Weir, who had described bringing McQueen back to London as one of her earliest ambitions in the role, called the show's return "a statement of confidence in British creativity at its most fearless and distinctive." McQueen's comeback came the same season Mulberry also returned to showing in the city, staging a presentation under new womenswear creative director Christopher Kane.
The show also lands amid broader changes at the house. McQueen, owned by Kering, is restructuring under a leaner retail strategy and is set to relocate its Old Bond Street flagship to another site on the same street later this year. New chief executive Gianfranco D'Attis called the London return "a meaningful moment for the house," positioning the show as both a creative and commercial reset.
For Tung, the appearance continues a run of high-profile fashion-week sightings that has made her one of the more closely watched young actors on the front-row circuit this year. Her attendance at a show with this much institutional weight behind it — the first McQueen has staged on British soil in 25 years — underscores how quickly she has become a fixture at the industry's biggest moments, even as the spotlight on the night remained squarely on McGirr's return to the house's hometown.
