McQueen Creative Collaborators: Tom Scutt
Discover the Spring Summer 2026 set design by Conceptual Production Designer Tom Scutt.
A site of abstracted folklore and ritual, the McQueen Spring Summer 2026 show set encapsulates the raw and febrile energy at the heart of the collection.
Designed by British Tony award-winning artist Tom Scutt, a key McQueen collaborator since the Spring Summer 2025 show, the installation centred around a fortified maypole-like structure made using 8000m of hessian ribbon, natural foliage and cork, created with sustainability in mind.
How do you approach working with the narrative for the season, including the inspiration of The Wicker Man (1973)?
We really liked this world that felt like a conservative, quite gentle and quite warm world, that has something quite dark and sinister rising through it.
That took us through ideas of the power of nature and the force of nature that drives up through humans.
The idea of a maypole came quickly. It feels like a festive, strange folkloric tradition could be a strong anchor point for this season, around which the models would parade. So, those shapes became the dominant structure in the space.
What generally informs your work as someone who works in theatre and music?
We always start with some kind of impetus. That could be a film, or that could be a sensibility, or the feeling of walking through Soho at 3AM, or it could be a book. Seán [McGirr] and I send a lot of music back and forth between each other, because that for me is the access point to all my work. That’s generally where we start and it’s just a case of world building from start to finish. The question is, how do we get everybody in the team to tap into everything through the themes of the piece. It’s about crossing different mediums, through music, through lighting, through scenery, through clothing.
What is the process of creating and installing a set like this?
The process of installing a piece like this is always quite strange and nerve-wracking because there’s a lot of suspension of belief. We are here, it’s daylight and the set is going in and you almost have to ignore what you are looking at, because you know it’s not going to be like that. You don’t see the full thing until the last minute.
We create lots of visual renderings; we sometimes use animation. For this piece we produced a scale model (1:25) which is the kind of thing I normally only do in theatre, but it felt important to do here to help us work out how we could light this show.
When we get into the space, my key collaborator is the lighting department. On the last two McQueen shows, lighting and effects have been really key to the production. Then there's really detailed walkthrough with the music to make sure the lighting and the evocation of the world around us is in step with the clothing.
What are the essential elements that elevate the set into a show experience?
This show involved a lot of lights and a lot of smoke as we moved from a more traditional folk world, into a club rave culture.
We wanted to convey a tension in the air between something warm and inviting, and a quasi-village fete that is hiding something more ritualistic and dark.
We have also been working with ACT 1.5 on this show, so we had a really strong sense of sustainability around the piece. This included many metres of hessian ribbon and maypole toppers made to look like a beautiful natural harvest.
