McQueen Is Coming Home: The London Fashion Week September Schedule Has Landed

The British Fashion Council dropped the provisional schedule for London Fashion Week on Monday, and the September season suddenly has a main event. Alexander McQueen is returning to the London runway, with Seán McGirr showing his first London collection for the house, menswear and womenswear together, closing Sunday 20 September at 8pm. For a brand that carries the city’s name in its bones and has spent years showing elsewhere, that slot is a homecoming, and the fashion crowd is treating it as one.

It is not even the only debut that Sunday. Christopher Kane presents his first collection as creative director of Mulberry at 3pm, his own return to the runway and a new chapter for the most British of handbag houses in the same afternoon. Two beloved names, two fresh starts, five hours apart.

The week itself runs Thursday 17 to Monday 21 September, and the calendar around those headliners is stacked. Burberry, Erdem, Simone Rocha, Roksanda, Richard Quinn, Emilia Wickstead and Barbour all return, Harris Reed shows his first collection since leaving Nina Ricci, and Ashley Williams is back on the runway after a lookbook-only season. Thursday opens with H&M‘s much discussed return alongside Nick Knight and SHOWstudio, and Marks & Spencer makes its first ever LFW runway appearance in its 100th year of fashion, which tells you something about where the high street’s confidence is sitting. The emerging layer is busy too: Fashion East returns with fresh BFC investment, and NEWGEN brings debuts from Francesca Lake, Gui Rosa and Petra Fagerström.

For most readers the day that matters is the Sunday, so here is its running order as announced:

One caution worth keeping. The schedule is provisional, and slots shuffle every season between announcement and show week, so treat the times as the current plan rather than gospel. The full day-by-day calendar sits on the BFC’s official schedule page and will keep updating there. What will not change is the shape of the story: London’s biggest name is back on London’s runway, and September just became the most interesting week of the fashion year.