Alexander McQueen: Iconoclastic Fashion Visionary
Alexander McQueen’s journey from tailor’s apprentice to acclaimed fashion designer was, by any standards, extraordinary.
Born in 1969, and brought up within a working class family in East London, McQueen left school with just one O-level (in Art) before completing an apprenticeship at the tailors Anderson & Sheppard on Savile Row.
After short stints working for designers such as Koji Tatsuno, Red or Ded, and Romeo Gigli, in 1990, he managed to secure a place on the prestigious MA Fashion course at Central Saint Martins in London.
From here, McQueen’s career went into overdrive.
His entire graduate collection was bought by the fashion editor Isabella Blow; and by the end of 1996 he was British Fashion Designer of the Year and head designer at the Parisian fashion house Givenchy.
McQueen’s collections showcased his technical virtuosity (tailored womenswear, low-rise ‘bumster’ trousers, innovatively distressed fabrics, spiral-cut dresses etc.) and were inspired by everything from cinema (Taxi Driver, 1993; The Birds, 1994; The Overlook, 1999) and British history (Jack the Ripper Stalks His Victims, 1992; Highland Rape, 1995) to the Arts & Crafts movement (No. 13, 1999), madness/psychiatry (Voss, 2001), and nature (Plato’s Atlantis, 2009).
His shows were arresting and controversial. They exposed the darker forces at play in society and portrayed women as empowered, fierce, and sexual.
He once said that he didn’t want people to leave his shows “feeling like you just had Sunday lunch - I want you to feel repulsed or exhilarated.”
McQueen’s meteoric rise can partly be explained by the way he burst onto the scene at the peak of the ‘Cool Britannia’ era of the mid/late-1990s.
He also managed to convince a dynamic team of innovative young stylists, designers, and event managers (e.g. Katy England, Shaun Leane, Philip Treacy, and Simon Costin) to work with him.
But his success can’t be explained by the people surrounding him or luck alone.
McQueen was a visionary and extraordinarily gifted.
And this made the self-destructive aspects of his personality and premature death all the more tragic - he committed suicide in 2010.
Despite this, McQueen’s designs continue to exert a powerful influence on the fashion industry, and a major retrospective of his work, Savage Beauty - hosted by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2011 and by the Victoria & Albert Museum in 2015 - attracted over a million visitors.
To learn more about his life/work, watch the award-winning documentary McQueen (see link to trailer below).
The books Alexander McQueen: The Life and the Legacy by the fashion historian Judith Watt, and Blood Beneath the Skin by the biographer Andrew Wilson are brilliant too.
He was a genius, and his association with Isabella Blow was incredible. Such a sad end for both of them but their work was amazing. Great piece, thank you!
Thanks James, adding this to my watch list. Such a familiar name whose life I know very little about.