Instinct on Fire:

Inside McQueen’s Folkloric Fever Dream in Paris

By Josie NeJame

There are runway shows that present clothing and then there are those rare moments when fashion feels like it’s summoning something ancient. That was the atmosphere as I took my seat for McQueen’s Spring/Summer 2026 show in Paris. The set felt like the beginning of a ritual. You know the one that you see in movies that begins with a towering maypole-like structure made from nearly 8,000 meters of hessian ribbon and wild foliage, created sustainably but radiating something older, more ceremonial, like a village altar waiting for a flame? 

Before the first look appeared, Seán McGirr’s words pulsed through the space like a low warning: What happens when we stop tempering instinct and allow desire to take over? It lingered like heat on skin.

The opening looks arrived with precision, officer jackets cut razor clean at the shoulder, pockets displaced as though control itself had begun to unravel. Tailoring is McQueen’s sacred language, and it was still present but restless, shifting, pulled off axis. McGirr’s dresses moved with a flowing lightness yet were anchored by corseted interiors that held the body just enough before releasing into movement, while the jackets were sharp and military cool at first glance, began to fray open as they walked, threads loosening like discipline giving way to impulse.

Then came the hips. Tailoring was slung low, straps fastened only where necessary, polished metal hardware catching the light like a flash of instinct. There was a clear reembrace of Y2K whispered too, skirts skimming the hip bone, waistbands purposefully lowered just enough for the brief, deliberate flash of a G-string ( or MQ strings). Not in a nostalgic, pop-star throwback kind of way, but sharpened and owned, like desire reclaimed on the wearer’s terms. And as someone who lived through the Hilton-Spears era of low-rise denim and visible thongs, an era many swore we’d never revisit. I genuinely did not think I would see a waistband drop that low again. Yet here it was, not ironic but feral, unapologetic. As a Florida girl, I couldn’t help but, no pun intended, understand the power of a sun-kissed waistline in July heat. Sometimes instinct demands skin.

Bustiers were slashed, poplin tugged tight across the torso as if pulled by an unseen hand. Silk drifted like breath meeting wind. It was heat translated into fabric,  that moment in the thick of August when the air itself feels alive. 

McQueen didn’t just show the body; it framed it, worshipped it. Then the fire came. Gowns scorched in spray-paint gradients, hemlines kissed by flame, chiffon unraveling into molten tendrils.  The gowns billowing parachute silks opened like insect wings caught mid-flight.  Instinct had taken over. Lightness reigned, but never without texture. McQueen pushed contrast in the most tactile way with sharply cut wool mohair hopsack colliding with sliced printed leather, flashes of metal chainmail and gold bullion embroidery catching the light like sparks, all grounded by washed cotton twill and softened by delicate floral jacquards. Even the sunburst silk habotai moved like heat haze, that diaphanous kind of fabric that doesn’t just float, it flickers.

Accessories were displayed like relics from a pilgrimage rather than commerce. The new Manta bag reinterpreted from the archival De Manta bag, the new bags that were carved in wood and mother-of-pearl, looked like something you’d be handed at the end of a ceremony rather than something you buy. Talisman jewelry of wishbones, scissors, charms swung like personal folklore written in metal. And then there were the shoes. McQueen’s iconic horn-shaped heel from Spring/Summer 2003 returned, not as nostalgia, but as bloodline to its supporting boots, sandals, mules, like modern ceremonial armor. Nothing felt borrowed from the past. It felt inherited.

The soundtrack to the show, began with elemental textures of water and wind and then shifted into a metallic techno pulse that hit like adrenaline. It felt like the beginning of a rave at the edge of a forest, and quite frankly, in that primal setup, I was ready to stay and dance long after the final look vanished into the light.

At the resee the next morning, the mood shifted from ritual to reverence. The jewelry of wishbones, scissor pendants, talismans were displayed not like product, but like relics. It felt less like a showroom and more like a hidden wing at The Met, where folklore and couture shared a glass vitrine. McQueen wasn’t just presenting fashion. They were presenting artifacts of desire.

Walking back out into the Paris light, I thought McGirr understood that primal pull. We don’t dress to hide. We dress to translate what lives under the skin.

For Spring/Summer 26 the McQueen client understands heat, instinct, and the pleasure of skin meeting summer air. They don’t sit and wait for summer… they instinctually get out and feel it.