The work of Alexander McQueen, who died yesterday, was complex, and always executed with his signature couture craftsmanship, writes DEIRDRE McQUILLANFashion Editor
THE DEATH of Alexander McQueen at the age of 40 has robbed the fashion world of one of its most daring and provocative stars, a rebellious, anarchic designer who constantly pushed boundaries, challenged convention and whose work always had a dark, macabre, disturbing side.
His shows in Paris – his next was scheduled for March 9th – were always the most eagerly awaited and usually the most outrageous and controversial, but they were always the work of a complex, original mind and executed with his signature couture craftsmanship.
His collections drew from a wide variety of historical references everything from the Dutch Old Masters to Leigh Bowery, but the imagery was always strong and visually bold, exaggeration always tempered with fine-tuned, precise cutting.
Entertainment he believed was very much part of the fashion industry, yet it would be the slender suit or the elegant but subtly cut dress in some wonderful fabric, the underlying romanticism in his clothes, that bought him commercial success.
His spring/summer fashion show in Paris last October not only made use of some 73 pattern designs inspired by the natural world (he was a keen scuba diver) and the Darwin centenary, but also made fashion history being streamed live on the internet for the first time.
Last week the designer revealed on Twitter that the recent death of his mother Joyce on Februarynd, to whom he was devoted, was something he found unable to bear.
Born Lee McQueen in Hackney, East London, the youngest of six children, his father was a cabbie and his mother, a genealogist, only returned to work teaching social history when he was 16. Passionate about his Scottish heritage – celebrated in an outstanding collection a few years ago – he never romanticised it.
“There’s nothing romantic about its history. What the British did there was nothing short of genocide,” he once said.
Interested in fashion from a very early age, he spent most of his time at primary and secondary school drawing clothes and avidly reading books about designers and their careers.
He left school at 16 with an O and A level in Art, not enough to earn a place at Central St Martins to study fashion.
Instead, on the advice of his mother, he trained as an apprentice tailor at two well- known Savile Row firms, Anderson Sheppard and Gieves and Hawkes before moving on to theatrical costumiers Bermans Nathans making clothes for shows such as Les Miserables. That training became seminal to his future career.
A period working with the Italian designer Romeo Gigli finally enabled him to study at Central St Martins where he graduated in l993 with a collection that was bought in its entirety by the eccentric, influential stylist Isabella Blow.
She continued to champion his work until her own death from suicide three years ago. His achievements were stellar; four times winner of the British Designer of the Year award, he was also awarded a CBE which he once said he accepted only on behalf of his parents.
He was open about his homosexuality and came out at 19 in the magazine Dazed and Confused.
In 1996, in a controversial appointment, he was made head designer of Givenchy by Bernard Arnault of Louis Vuitton Moet Hennessy (LVMH), following in the wake of John Galliano but it was an unhappy liaison which finally came to an end in 2001 after a number of disastrous collections.
His big break, however, came in December 2000 when the Gucci group bought 51 per cent of his label for a rumoured $80 million, allowing him the creative freedom to design what he wanted.
McQueen, ever the showman, always insisted that his collections were personal, autobiographical.
“There always must be some interaction with the audience to get the message across of what’s going on in your mind”, he said.
In a telling revelation, he once recalled that at eight years of age he witnessed the beating of his older sister by her husband to within an inch of her life.
“Everything I’ve done since then was for the purpose of making women look stronger . . . there’s always an underlying sinister side to [my clothes] sexuality because of the way I have seen women treated in my life”.