LONDON — McQueen on Tuesday introduced Reverb, a new cultural program that explores the role music plays in the creative fields.
Curated by creative director Seán McGirr, McQueen Reverb kicked off its four-part lineup running throughout June with British indie rock band Bar Italia and French curator Cyrus Goberville at the brand’s flagship space on Old Bond Street.
McGirr, who arrived at the brand in 2023, attended the event alongside McQueen’s chief executive officer Gianfilippo Testa and VIPs dressed head to toe in the Irish designer’s latest runway collection.
Goberville, head of cultural programming at the Kering-owned Bourse de Commerce — Pinault Collection, called Bar Italia “a very strange band” in a complimentary way.
“Their music is very hard to pin down. It’s between rock, post-punk, and a lot of different energies,” added Goberville, who is also a collaborator of the house, having produced the runway soundtrack for McGirr’s sophomore show for spring 2025.
While guests were chatting and sipping cocktails, Bar Italia members Nina Cristante, Jezmi Tarik Fehmi and Sam Fenton shared their respective first music-related memories and played their favorite tracks from their vinyl collections, including “Sittin’ Here” by Dizzee Rascal, “In My Life” by The Beatles, “Gimme Shelter” by The Rolling Stones, “Foxy Lady” by Jimi Hendrix and more.
Cristante, donning a ruffled checkered vest with a matching pleated miniskirt by McQueen, said music has been a part of her life from the beginning. Her mother, who works in theater, would play Chopin to put her to sleep.
“I was brought up in a very provincial place. MTV and all of that were very important. Dizzee Rascal was a big deal. Many years after it came out, it’s still one of the best albums ever,” she added, before putting “Sittin’ Here” on the high-fidelity sound system set up by the London-based audiophile Chris Tindall.
Fehmi said he was deeply influenced by the English virtual band Gorillaz as a child.
“I remembered my sister coming home from uni with ‘The Singles Collection 2001–2011.’ I cried before I heard the songs. I just knew it was a thing, and I cried so much. I heard people talking about it. I knew it was a phenomenon. I grew up in the countryside, so if there’s a phenomenon on TV, and someone comes into my house with the real object everyone’s talking about. I was like, Wow,” Fehmi said.
In terms of what makes London special as a holy ground for independent music, Cristante said it’s the diversity.
“One day you can get into the band thing, and then another day you just end up in a James Massiah’s night. I just like the fact that there’s this equally strong, different kind of scenes, and they’re all growing and expanding at the same time,” she added.
Closing the listening session, Cristante picked “Liberties,” a track from “1995 Epilepsy,” an album that’s deemed “by far the most mysterious project from the world music catalog” by a Reddit user. Cristante believed this album was produced by British musician Mica Levi.
“Mica is incredible. Everything they do is so special. This one is slightly a twist, not many people know that it’s Mica, because it’s under a different name, but if you know, then it kind of makes sense,” she said.
In the coming weeks, record producer A.G. Cook, rapper John Glacier, and singer-songwriter Nilüfer Yanya will share top picks from their vinyl collections, sharing the formative sounds that have shaped their creativity, as well as their music.
