Alexander McQueen Is Getting the Off-Broadway Treatment

Since his death in 2010, Lee Alexander McQueen’s life has become the subject of numerous books, a London-based play, and a (quite impactful) documentary. Now, the designer is getting the Broadway treatment—or rather, the off-Broadway treatment. On September 9, ahead of the spring/summer 2026 New York Fashion Week season, House of McQueen will hit the New York stage.

The play will tell the story of McQueen’s life, with a script written by Darrah Cloud and direction from Sam Helfrich. McQueen’s nephew, Gary James McQueen, will act as creative director, while production designer Jason Ardizzone-West, who most recently staged Lady Gaga’s 2025 Lollapalooza performance, will do the set design. Costumes are an important job in any production, but an integral one in a show about McQueen—the responsibility to deliver falls upon Obie Award-winning costume designer Kaye Voyce.

According to Rick Lazes, House of McQueen’s executive producer, the show will touch upon issues including “bullying, rejection, homophobia, depression, and even suicide,” though the hope is for it to be “a healing story.” Gary McQueen, who worked at McQueen’s men’s division for seven years, told Vogue that the goal is to keep Lee McQueen’s legacy alive. “A lot of the younger generation don’t really understand the person behind the brand,” he said.

The actor who will play Lee Alexander McQueen has not yet been announced, and the show is still a work in progress. According to Lazes, there have been 26 drafts of the script, though each one proves more powerful than the last. “Every time we do a reading, the actors get so emotional about it,” he said.

This is not the first time a play has touched upon McQueen’s story. In 2015, McQueen, written by James Phillips and directed by John Caird, opened in London. The story took place over the course of a single night—when a girl sneaks into McQueen’s apartment to steal a dress and is caught by the designer. Glee star Dianna Agron played the girl, and Stephen Wight portrayed the designer.

There are currently multiple projects in the works focusing on the life of McQueen and his contemporaries. There’s The Queen of Fashion, a biopic about British fashion editor, patron, and icon Isabella Blow, who is credited for discovering McQueen when she bought the entirety of his Central Saint Martins graduate collection. Andrea Riseborough is set to play the role of Blow, and while McQueen will be a part of the story, the actor portraying him has yet to be cast.

In June, Lazes will open an immersive experience to accompany House of McQueen, though this one will take place in Los Angeles. Titled Provocateur, the show will allow guests to “step into the world” of the designer, entering eleven spaces that were integral to his life, including his childhood bedroom and the tailor shop where he worked as an apprentice. Through technology like AI and CGI, audiences can watch McQueen direct models backstage before a show and experience the chaos as though it occurred in real time. Lazes is aware this is all “a little over the top,” but feels that’s appropriate, considering the subject manner. “Lee was over the top, right?” As the House of McQueen trailer puts it, McQueen is back.