The Return of Shaun Leane: McQueen’s Most Daring Jewelry Collaborator

The McQueen Reunion

After the McQueen team approached Leane with the idea, he and McGirr met over lunch. “I connected with his energy and enthusiasm. It wasn’t Lee’s, of course, but I got him,” Leane recalls.

McGirr envisioned a metal harness to complete a pink satin dress. “I saw the idea for this piece and thought, ‘How can I put my design language into that?’” he says. He weighed how to craft it, how the model would feel in it, and how it could empower the look. “It took me back to 30 years ago to the first show I did with Lee, ‘The Hunger.’ I don’t just put jewelry on clothes. I fuse materials.  Metal is a beautiful material because you can create something so formidable, strong, and protective. If you work metal well, it can look like silk.”

Two archive headpieces by Leane—one from the Autumn Winter 1998 ‘Joan’, and Autumn Winter 2004 ‘Pantheon ad Lucem’ — also returned to the runway.

While fashion per se didn’t stir his creative process, it did lead to an epiphany. “It was sculpting a piece around a body that I still have the passion and energy for,” he noted. 

Where the Wild Things Take Shape

The buzzy London Fashion Week collaboration may have put his new atelier 12 in the spotlight, but the McQueen piece was actually Leane’s seventh creation under the project. Each is vastly different, but all begin with collaboration.

Take commission number 2 from a client in Ireland who wanted to have a ring to pass on to her daughter. They discussed it on a long hike near Leane’s home in Macgillicuddy’s Reeks, which he describes as a “dark, raw, rural mountain range ripe with thorns, sheep horn and antlers where death is naturally accepted.” The landscape informed his work with McQueen, with whom he felt a synergy. 

“That’s something Lee used to celebrate in his work: this dark beauty. He would say, ‘I find the most beautiful things in the darkest places; there’s beauty in death as well,’” he recalls. 

The flora and fauna abounding on the walk inspired a more uplifting idea: an abstract daffodil. Not a delicate floral motif, but an abstract composition of sharply cut gemstones inspired by the March birth flower. “The client didn’t like floral motifs, so I convinced her it wouldn’t look obvious,” he recalls. “It’s a collection of strong triangle shapes—specially cut triangles in cognac and white—with a square-cut center citrine stone.” Two curved pavé ring jackets simulate leaves.

“It may look simple, but the stones were not easy to cut. Everyone leaves a trace on the work; I design the works, but cutters, polishers, illustrators, goldsmiths, enamellers, and engravers do too.”  

Design number 6, a 3.5-carat, D flawless diamond engagement ring, is currently in the works.

Diamonds With an Edge

Leane is a classically trained jeweler who spent his first 15 years making high jewelry pieces for prestigious stores on Bond Street and royal families worldwide, and a metalsmith who has worked in every metal out there.

For all his fascination with metal, Leane knows exactly what diamonds bring to a design. His particular obsession? Brilliant cuts. “I use a lot of pavé in my work. It brings the piece alive,” he said.

The design gouache illustrates this. “The gold is made with yellow paint, and various shades for colored gemstones. The diamonds and facets are made with white paint,” the jeweler explained.

“My work is about fine, sharp lines that can look aggressive in metal. With fine, tiny, brilliant-cut diamonds, they become softer and more mystical, adding character and depth,” he adds.

The Art of Doing It His Way

Leane jeweler walked away from his namesake brand, founded in 1999, because it became more of a commercial merchandising exercise than an expression of his creative mind. Post-McQueen, he also expanded into architectural sculptures, from a commissioned building exterior on Young Street in Kensington to a custom grave marker.

“My new atelier project 12 is about creating a piece and letting it breathe, evolve and grow in innovation, technique, design and material,” Leane says of the project, which launched alongside the runway debut.

The concept aims for twelve unique pieces a year, edited, signed, and numbered. They include Leane’s three expressions: fine jewelry, visionary or body adornment, and objets d’art. Collaborations such as the McQueen harness will happen once or twice a year. Since the harness completes a clothing look, up to 12 will be made beyond the original.

“When Seán approached me, I was already in this space mentally. It was a bit daunting,” Leane recalls. The project, which required a hard deadline, was antithetical to the slow organic approach of 12. He accepted the collaboration only after his artisans agreed as well. 

“The Wiener Werkstätte—the Vienna workshop that ran from 1903 until 1932—has always inspired me. 12 allows me to work with artisans with different design languages across various disciplines,” he said, noting a furniture collaboration may be next. “I would bring elements such as wood, metal, diamonds and precious stones together,” he added.

Shifting focus from a commercial brand to this new chapter was personal. “Someone once told me, ‘The longest journey in your life will be between your head and your heart,’” he recalls. Leane’s journey brought him full circle, from creating pieces in an atelier to 12, where he feels creatively at home again.

“The purpose of my life is to create. If you put out the energy, which is a celebration of creativity, the right things come back.”