Archive Study
The Mira Chai-Hyde Alexander McQueen Archive
Garments, photographs and working papers kept through friendship. Mira Chai-Hyde’s archive brings the life around McQueen into view.
Introduction
Mira Chai-Hyde knew Alexander McQueen as Lee. Their friendship grew around the Hoxton studio, where work and daily life shared the same rooms.
Garments arrived as gifts, exchanges and pieces made for her. She kept the photographs, invitations and working papers too. Catalogued by Three Over Six, more than 600 objects preserve that closeness to the making of the collections.


Irere, Spring/Summer 2003. Shaun Leane ear cuffs. Archive items IRERE12 and IRERE01. © Mira Chai-Hyde
Archive scope
A practice preserved in many forms
More than 150 garments span the formative London collections, the Givenchy years and later work through 2010. Prototypes, drawings, correspondence, invitations, photographs and recordings preserve the working world around them.
A sketch may sit beside the garment it anticipated; a photograph beside something given and kept. Those connections give this archive its particular depth.
The garment records encompass Highland Rape, The Hunger, Dante, La Poupée, It's a Jungle Out There, Joan, No. 13, VOSS and later collections through 2010, together with work from Givenchy Haute Couture.
Runway-worn and collection-associated garments sit beside prototypes, studio and production samples, commercial variants, custom-made works and altered pieces. Detached components remain catalogued with their principal garments.
Polaroids, personal snapshots and behind-the-scenes photographs record the studio, runway and life around the work, from The Hunger and Dante to Irere.
Original design sketches, make-up studies and handwritten notes preserve ideas in development and the collaborative processes through which they were realised.
Letters, keepsakes and records of creative exchange retain a private register of the relationships that sustained the work beyond the runway.
Invitations, backstage passes, lookbooks, runway recordings and rare museum documentation place individual objects within their original moments of presentation and later interpretation.
Footwear, belts, headpieces and jewellery—including work associated with Shaun Leane—extend the archive's record of silhouette, body and performance beyond the garment.

Formation
Within the life of the work
Mira knew McQueen as Lee. In 1990s Hoxton, his studio and her home occupied the same building; for nearly two years, he lived in her loft. Friendship, work and daily life overlapped. She cut his hair, worked on menswear presentations and contributed to campaigns and grooming.
Garments came as gifts, studio pieces and exchanges for work. Photographs and invitations remained because Mira had been there. The archive's provenance is therefore not incidental to its meaning: it records the circumstances in which the objects were made, used and kept.



Sketch16, by Alexander McQueen; Sketch18, attributed to the studio. Pencil and biro. © Three Over Six
Chronology
The archive in time
Read chronologically, the archive moves through garments and the documents that surrounded them. Its strength lies in the continuity between the early London collections, the Givenchy years and later work through 2010.
Garments and early collection material are joined by original sketches, backstage photography and show documentation.
Garments, studies, invitations, passes and production records preserve the collections alongside their making and presentation.
Runway garments sit with lookbooks, credits, correspondence and internal show material.
Garments, accessories and backstage photographs record the increasing synthesis of clothing, image and performance.
Later runway garments, studio pieces and production samples extend the material record through McQueen's final complete collection.
Parallel practices
Across two houses
The archive holds work from McQueen's own label alongside Givenchy Haute Couture, preserving the years in which he developed two distinct practices at once. Garments are joined by working material, including make-up studies associated with Eclect Dissect and photographs made during Givenchy's presentation in Japan.
Placed together, these records allow differences in construction, proportion and atelier finish to be read directly. They also show how recurring ideas moved between the freedom of McQueen's London practice and the disciplines of the couture house.
The catalogue
The catalogue
Three Over Six records each object’s material, attribution, condition and history. Mira’s recollections remain in her name, alongside the garments and documents that carry their own evidence.
Designer, collection, date, object type and known relationship to the studio.
Materials, construction, labels, marks, size and measurements where recorded.
Wear, alteration, loss and evidence of use are described without embellishment.
Ownership, recollection, runway imagery and published sources are recorded as distinct forms of evidence.
Private acquisition
The archive is offered through Three Over Six
The Mira Chai-Hyde Alexander McQueen Archive is available for private acquisition through Three Over Six. Detailed catalogues, condition records and supporting documentation are available to institutions and private collectors upon request.
Archive record
The Mira Chai-Hyde Archive
- Designer
- Alexander McQueen (British, 1969-2010)
- Archive period
- 1995–2010
- Extent
- More than 600 catalogued objects
- Contents
- Garments, prototypes, studio samples, accessories, photographs, works on paper, show material and ephemera
- Houses
- Alexander McQueen and Givenchy
- Custodian
- Mira Chai-Hyde
- Status
- Available for private acquisition through Three Over Six
- Documentation
- Catalogued and researched by Three Over Six
- Acknowledgements
- Research assistance: John Matheson, founder of McQueen Vault.
Appraisal and specialist advice: Patricia Frost, independent adviser on fashion and textiles.
References
- Three Over Six, In Conversation with Mira Chai-Hyde
- The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty
- The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty catalogue
- Victoria and Albert Museum, Alexander McQueen: an introduction
- Victoria and Albert Museum, McQueen's collaborators: Shaun Leane