McQueen F/W 2025

Yet the feeling these images, shot by British photographer and film director Glen Luchford, awaken isn’t about fear or escape. It’s about instincts led by emotion. There’s a tension between physicality and freedom, a tension between tradition and transgression. You could even say, a hidden desire — an intimacy created through an almost rose-coloured, spectral play of light.

While working on the concept for this campaign, the brand’s creative director, Seán McGirr, drew inspiration from Victorian Gothic, the leading creative minds of the 19th century, and their uncompromising ways of self-expression: provocateurs such as Oscar Wilde, Vesta Tilley, and Romaine Brooks. And it works. The way the models are falling, grabbing, kneeling as if praying to an unknown superior force, staring in ecstasy, easily evokes Dorian Gray and his longing for beauty and eternal youth.

The idea of combining horror, supernaturality, and rawness to create a sense of desire – of animalistic craving and nostalgia – is nothing new. Just a few days ago, Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein premiered at the Venice Film Festival and received a thirteen-minute standing ovation from the audience. As you can see, the McQueen Fall/Winter 2025 campaign (once again) hits the spot, inviting us to dream, ache, and hunger for a world where elegance meets the eerie, and where being impulsive, passionate, even unruly is just as deeply human as being measured, mindful, and composed.