Stepping into the McQ store on Mayfair’s Dover Street, visitors are faced with a large white digital dining table – rather like a giant iPad. From here you can project catwalk images and videos of the Alexander McQueen diffusion brand onto the wall using small viewing boxes. It’s weirdly addictive. Downstairs, past the Brutalist-inspired concrete walls and red velvet carpets (very boudoir) there's a digital mirror on which you can photograph – and email – yourself in with looks from the collection.
McQ’s London home has been conceived by interior designer David Collins (of The Wolseley and The Connaught fame) and with its sleek curves and high-gloss detailing, it’s like a raunchy episode of Star Trek, which makes sense as sex and futurism where two of the late designer’s most enduring influences. Add to the mix an atmospheric sound track by musician and long time McQueen collaborator David Gosling and you have something which encapsulates McQueen’s eerie, subversive spirit. Thankfully, despite all this technical jiggery pokery, the clothes are still the main appeal – the brand’s creative director Sarah Burton has injected new life into the McQ brand, which had lost its way under licensees until it was reacquired by McQueen in 2010.