McQueen Autumn Winter 2025 Pre-collection: The Coach & Horses
Soho, London
The heart of the McQueen Spring Summer 2026 Pre-collection.
Greek Street, Soho, London is home to a historical site that has served as a cultural hub for a community of characters since the early 19th century. Still standing today, now a grade II listed building, The Coach & Horses pub continues to attract an eclectic cast of figures, enmeshing counter-culture and tradition.
In the 1950s, it was the well-known site attracting a rich mix of bohemian characters—testament to Soho’s reputation as a melting pot where class, ethnicities, trades and temperament converged.
Tradition is patently felt in its interior: rich wood panelling and bottle green glazed tiles—scantly changed from the 1950, carrying a sense of history to the present day. Warmly lit, with the ambient glow, it retains the charm that enticed decades of creative figures who left their mark on culture: writers, poets, musicians and artists.
The pub's enduring legacy is built on the "transient" individuals who gravitated towards Soho's unique blend of counterculture and tradition.
It was a hearth for sailors and tradespeople, sharing space with figures from literary and artistic movements: journalist Jeffrey Bernard, renowned artists Francis Bacon and Lucian Freud, literary figure Caroline Blackwood, and actor Diana Lambert were among its famous fixtures.
The subversive spirit, challenging convention while honouring the codes of the past, and its enduring sense of community continues. Today, it inspires the McQueen Autumn Winter 2025 Pre-collection, and is the heart of its campaign.
Its lineage of thinkers and artists is reflected in sharp-collared shirting and broad-shouldered coats, their silhouettes cinched. The naval tailoring of its passing sailors is rearticulated in wool silk gabardine, their anchor tattoos traced in metallic bullion and into abstract floral prints.
Critic and musician George Melly, a frequent patron in the 1950s, best encapsulates the spirit of the inner-city enclave: "The fifties were a time of austerity, of punitive conventions, of a grey uniformity…. Soho was the only area in London where the rules didn't apply." A site of transgression and creative rebellion, embodying the subversive spirit of McQueen.
