The short version: Alexander McQueen confirmed on 15 October that creative director Seán McGirr is leaving after three years, the same day Calvin Klein confirmed Veronica Leoni’s exit. It is Kering’s second creative departure in a week. For anyone buying McQueen, the house codes outlast the person drawing them.
Alexander McQueen, the London house owned by the French luxury group Kering, announced on Thursday 15 October that Seán McGirr is stepping down as creative director after three years in the role, FashionNetwork reported. Kering did not name a successor. It said an announcement would follow soon and that the next creative director will be based in London.
The same day, Calvin Klein confirmed that Veronica Leoni will leave Calvin Klein Collection, the revived runway line she has led since May 2024, when her current contract ends, according to FashionUnited, which noted that WWD reported Leoni’s exit first. And it came six days after Kering confirmed, on 9 October, that Anthony Vaccarello was leaving Saint Laurent after a decade. Two of Kering’s houses are now looking for a designer at the same time.
Kering chief executive Luca de Meo thanked McGirr for his contribution and said the group would set “a bold new direction for the house”, building on its tailoring heritage. McGirr said he was looking forward to his next chapter and wished the house well. McQueen’s chief executive, Gianfranco D’Attis, thanked him for respecting the label’s heritage and for bringing the shows back to London.
Three years, a shrinking business and a return to London
McGirr’s tenure was short by the standards of the house he inherited. He joined in October 2023 from JW Anderson, where he ran ready-to-wear, and succeeded Sarah Burton, who spent 26 years at McQueen and led its creative direction for 13 of them, succeeding Lee Alexander McQueen himself. His first collection showed in March 2024.
The business underneath him has been contracting. FashionNetwork puts McQueen’s turnover at under €300 million and describes a restructuring that includes significant store closures. In June, Kering reached an agreement with Italian unions over 54 redundancies at McQueen’s production sites, with departures limited to staff who accepted incentives rather than compulsory dismissals; Kering called the decision difficult and said the aim was to return the business to sustainable profitability. In September, McGirr took the spring/summer 2027 collection back to London Fashion Week, a show framed as a reset under D’Attis. It turned out to be his last.
Why now: exit season, again
The pattern is the point: the industry that spent 2025 hiring designers is now letting a second wave of them go. FashionUnited counts more than 20 leading brands that changed creative directors in 2025, with 16 designers debuting at 15 houses during the September 2025 shows alone. This week’s exits suggest that many of those appointments, and some older ones, are now being judged against sales that have not recovered.
Saint Laurent is the clearest example of the stakes. Under Vaccarello, revenue nearly tripled to a peak of €3.3 billion, according to Business of Fashion figures cited by FashionUnited, before falling to €2.6 billion in 2025; the house returned to growth in the first half of 2026. McQueen is roughly a tenth of that size, and Calvin Klein Collection is a runway line revived only in 2024. The sector-wide backdrop is no better: our read of LVMH’s 5% fall in third-quarter fashion sales showed the biggest group in the business still waiting for demand to return.
The Faz read: a house is not its designer
A creative director appointment is a bet that one person can make a label feel urgent again, and the exit is the bill when that bet is called early. Three years is barely enough time for a designer’s ideas to reach the shop floor, be understood by customers and show up in the numbers. When groups shorten that window, they treat the house as a vehicle for a rotating author. We made the same argument when Carven named yet another designer: churn spends down the one thing a brand cannot buy back, which is a customer’s confidence about what the name stands for.
McQueen is better placed than most to survive it, because its identity was never only seasonal. Kering’s own statement leans on tailoring, and that is where the house’s value has always sat: sharp shoulders, cut, construction. Those codes predate McGirr and will outlast whoever follows him.
What it means if you buy, own or sell McQueen
If you own pieces from McGirr’s three years, nothing about them changed on Thursday. The cloth and the make are what they were. What changes is the story the market tells about them, and that is slow and unpredictable. The RealReal’s 2026 resale report, published in August, found searches for Sarah Burton rose 243% after she moved from McQueen to Givenchy, a reminder that resale interest follows designers who have built a long, recognisable body of work. A three-year tenure has not yet been through that test. Don’t buy a McGirr piece now on the theory that his departure will make it more valuable.
If you are shopping McQueen this season, buy what you would wear regardless of whose name is on the press release. The same RealReal report found the average resale price of the house’s skull scarf rose 25% in the past year, which says something about where durable demand for McQueen lives: in the house’s continuous signatures rather than any one designer’s statement pieces. Judge a jacket on the shoulder, the canvas and the finish, not on the season it came from. And if McQueen’s sharp tailoring is what you’re after, the archive is wide: earlier pieces from both Lee Alexander McQueen and Burton turn up on the vintage and resale market, where you can check the make in your hands. Our case for buying a house’s archive rather than its latest season applies here too.
If you are selling, there is no reason to rush. The resale data cited above measures interest building over months and years, not in the days after an announcement.
What happens next
Kering has said McQueen’s new creative director will be announced soon and will work from London; Saint Laurent’s successor was also promised soon on 9 October and had not been named by 15 October. Calvin Klein said only that a new creative leadership structure for Collection will be revealed in due course, with no date. Whoever arrives at each house will be presented, as McGirr’s September show was, as a reset.
Where this leaves you
Three exits in a week tell you less about three designers than about an industry still searching for a quick fix to slow demand. The houses with something durable underneath — a cut, a craft, a code that customers recognise without a press release — will ride it out. Shop for that, wherever you find it: in the archive, at an independent workshop that has made the same coat for twenty years, or in the one piece from a big house that would still make sense if nobody knew who designed it.
The next move is yours.
Sources: FashionNetwork — Alexander McQueen announces Seán McGirr exit · FashionUnited — Veronica Leoni leaves Calvin Klein, Seán McGirr departs McQueen · FashionUnited — Saint Laurent confirms Vaccarello’s departure · FashionNetwork — Kering averts compulsory redundancies at McQueen · Glossy — resale data and archive revivals
