about mcqueenflix

Hi, I’m Aira. McQueenFlix is a free archive of Alexander McQueen’s runway shows - fifty-three of them, in order, with notes on every collection. I made it because of how hard it is to study fashion from where I am. Fashion is an incredibly global industry, but access to its history is still very geographically concentrated: if you’re studying in Paris or London you have the museum exhibitions, the libraries, the archival collections. I studied fashion design in India, and almost all of my education happened through whatever I could find on the internet, looking at books that cost fifteen or sixteen thousand rupees to import and closing the tab. And when I tried to research a career chronologically, everything was scattered - a runway video on one platform, photographs somewhere else, reviews in old publications, and then the work of figuring out how any of it connected. It was a ridiculous amount of effort just to begin studying someone’s work. So I put it all in one place, in order, with the references named and the sources listed down to the page, because putting fashion history online is not the same thing as making it accessible. A show might be sitting on YouTube, but if you don’t know what you’re looking for or what you’re supposed to recognise, how much can you actually learn from it? You shouldn’t need a fashion degree, an encyclopaedic knowledge of designers or an invitation to Paris Fashion Week to watch runway.

If you’ve never watched a show, start with No. 13, Spring/Summer 1999 - you don’t need to know anything about fashion to be completely captivated by it. And if something here is wrong, tell me: people who were in the rooms keep writing in with corrections, footage and sources, and whoever sends something in is credited on the show they helped with. That’s the best part of doing this in public.

I want people to have favourite runway shows the way they have favourite films.

Sending you my best,
Aira

Study with me

watch here

Pick a collection, press play, start wherever you want.

watch with me on instagram ↗

This is where I give you my commentary on the runway that I watch. I understand some people have shorter attention spans - this is where I meet them :)

find my fashion history syllabus on room service ↗

My substack is where I teach you what I study. Independent fashion research, served to your room every Sunday.

Written about

Also in Highxtar, Noir, Panorama, Le Banana and Bits Magazine - in English, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese and German.