Alexander McQueen

Lee Alexander McQueen was the most creative and influential fashion designer of his generation. Born in 1969, the youngest of six children in a working-class British family, McQueen’s exceptional talent brought him to the pinnacle of the fashion world. Other designers were more successful financially, but no one else created fashions of such visual power and savage beauty.

McQueen, who once described himself as the “pink sheep” of his family, left school at age sixteen to apprentice with Savile Row tailors Anderson & Sheppard, where he allegedly sewed an offensive insult into the lining of a suit for Prince Charles. Later he traveled to Milan to work as a pattern cutter for Romeo Gigli. Returning to London, McQueen received an MA in fashion design from Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design. His graduation collection was bought in its entirety by fashion stylist Isabella Blow, who became a close friend and supporter. Just two years later, he was named British Designer of the Year, the first of many such accolades.

McQueen’s early collections, such as “Highland Rape” (an allusion to English atrocities in Scotland), were controversial, and the press characterized him as “the hooligan of English fashion.” His notorious “bumsters” started the trend for low-rise jeans. In 1996, Bernard Arnault, the president of LVMH, appointed McQueen head designer at the House of Givenchy. McQueen immediately caused offense by dismissing its founder, Hubert de Givenchy, as “irrelevant.” Although many of his couture collections at Givenchy were extremely beautiful, McQueen felt creatively constrained there and ultimately quit early in 2001, having signed a new partnership agreement with the Gucci Group, which acquired 51% of his eponymous company.

McQueen presented his collections in spectacular runway shows that blurred the line between art and fashion. Beauty and horror were often closely juxtaposed in McQueen’s dark vision of the world. His Fall/Winter 1998 show on the theme of Joan of Arc ended with a model in a red hooded cat suit standing alone in a ring of fire. Another show, Voss (Spring/Summer 2001), took place in a mirrored cube meant to evoke an insane asylum. One model, her head bandaged, wore an avian-inspired dress with a bodice made of microscope slides dyed red. His Fall/Winter 2006 show featured a three-dimensional hologram of Kate Moss hovering like a vision over the runway. In 2010 McQueen committed suicide by hanging himself, only days after his beloved mother died of cancer. His longtime assistant Sarah Burton was appointed designer shortly thereafter.