McQueen Alexander - Alexander McQueen: blood beneath the skin

Alexander McQueen

Also by Andrew Wilson:

Mad Girls Love Song:

Sylvia Plath and Life Before Ted

Shadow of the Titanic:

The Extraordinary Stories of Those Who Survived

Harold Robbins:

The Man Who Invented Sex

Beautiful Shadow:

A Life of Patricia Highsmith

The Lying Tongue

First published in Great Britain by Simon & Schuster UK Ltd, 2015
A CBS COMPANY

Copyright 2015 by Andrew Wilson
This book is copyright under the Berne Convention.
No reproduction without permission.
All rights reserved.

The right of Andrew Wilson to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

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A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Hardback ISBN: 978-1-47113-178-3
Trade paperback ISBN: 978-1-47113-179-0
Ebook ISBN: 978-1-47113-181-3

The author and publishers have made all reasonable efforts to contact copyright-holders for permission, and apologise for any omissions or errors in the form of credits given. Corrections may be made to future printings.

Endpapers copyright Michael Adrover, Murray Arthur and the McQueen family

Typeset in the UK by M Rules
Printed and bound by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY

O n the morning of Monday 20 September 2010, the steps outside St Pauls Cathedral in London were transformed into a catwalk. From a fleet of sleek black cars emerged a procession of beautiful women, some in homage plumes, nearly all in raven black.

As they took their seats inside St Pauls, an organist played Edward Elgars Nimrod from the Enigma Variations. The choice of music, one of the fourteen variations on a hidden theme, was appropriate for the occasion. Elgars missing motif, what the composer described as its dark saying because its chief character is never on stage, captured the strange contrariness of the event, a memorial for a man who was physically absent, but whose ghostly presence haunted every moment of the service.

Indeed, McQueen himself was often described as an enigma. LEnfant terrible. Hooligan. Genius. Alexander McQueens life makes for an intriguing story, wrote one commentator after his death. Few understood Britains most accomplished fashion designer, a sensitive visionary who reinvented fashion in so many ways.

The service, which began promptly at eleven oclock unlike so many McQueen shows that started behind schedule opened with an address given by Reverend Canon Giles Fraser. It was a life lived in the public gaze, but it was as vulnerable and retiring as it was glamorous, he said. Fraser, wearing one of the gold and white copes encrusted with Swarovski crystals that had been commissioned for the cathedrals three-hundredth anniversary,

That day in the cathedral McQueens family sat apart from the celebrities and the models. Andrew Groves, one of McQueens former boyfriends, noticed that the designers taxi-driver father, Ronald, and his brothers and sisters, seemed distinctly uncomfortable. They felt really out of place at that event, said Groves, who in the nineties worked as a fashion designer under the name Jimmy Jumble and who is now also a fashion tutor. To me it felt as though they didnt really understand Lees legacy. It was like, whats all this about? Alice Smith, a fashion recruitment consultant and a friend who met McQueen in 1992, was struck by the difference in footwear on the two sides of the aisle. The memorial service was very odd, as I couldnt reconcile the family with the fashion crowd. I kept looking at their shoes the family had very normal high street shoes and on the other side were these fantastically expensive, ostentatious shoes.

That contrast symbolized one of the paradoxes of McQueens life, a contradiction that the designer never fully resolved. That was his problem, said Alice. His family was well-behaved, they were nice people trying to live a good life and on the other side of

After the Lords Prayer, the congregation stood to sing I Vow to Thee My Country, a hymn that includes two lines McQueen would have found especially poignant: And theres another country Ive heard of long ago,/Most dear to them that love her, most great to them that know. Throughout his life the designer was searching for another country of his own. McQueen yearned for a place, a state, an idea, a man, a dress, a dream, a drug that would transform his reality. Yet if he was addicted to anything Lee made no secret of his seemingly insatiable appetite for cocaine ultimately he was addicted to the lure of fantasy, the prospect that one day he might be free of his body, his memories, his regrets, his past.

It was clear that McQueen thought that love had the ultimate transformative power. Of course, there is a dark side, said Katy England three years before her friends death. But there is also a truly romantic side. Lees such a romantic character and he has these dreams. Its all about him looking for love, isnt it? Its him looking for love and his idea of love and romance, well, its way above and beyond reality.

On his upper right arm the designer had a tattoo of the words, spoken by Helena, in Shakespeares A Midsummer Nights Dream, Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind. The quotation is key to understanding both Lee McQueen the man and

McQueens extraordinary talent as a designer was the subject of an address given by Anna Wintour. He was a complex and gifted young man who, as a child, liked nothing more than watching the birds from the roof of [an] east London tower block, said the editor-in-chief of American Vogue, who was wearing a black and gold embroidered McQueen coat.

Despite the black spectre of depression that overshadowed his later years, McQueen had an unstoppable energy and zest for life. He was an unashamed hedonist he adored both the finest caviar and a treat of beans and poached eggs on toast while sitting on the

The jeweller Shaun Leane, whose address followed Nymans performance, and who worked with Lee on a number of collections, said, I watched you grow, you broke the boundaries and succeeded. He spoke of how, on a recent trip to Africa, he had looked up at the sky and asked, Where are you, Lee? As the words left my mouth a shooting star shot across the sky, you answered me. You moved stars like you moved our lives.

When Leane retook his seat a collection was passed around the congregation to raise funds for the Terrence Higgins Trust, Battersea Dogs Cats Home and Blue Cross, all charities close to McQueens heart. The soulful voices of the London Community Gospel Choir echoed throughout the church. Amazing grace, how sweet the sound/That saved a wretch like me!/I once was lost, but now am found;/Was blind, but now I see. McQueens grace, the thing that gave him hope at least in the early days was fashion.

After the gospel choir finished singing Amazing Grace, Suzy Menkes, then fashion editor of the International Herald Tribune, took her turn and spoke of McQueens vision. In thinking about the McQueen legacy, I remember his bravery, his daring and his imagination, she said. But I keep coming back to the beauty: the streamlined elegance of his tailoring, the wispy lightness of printed chiffon, the weirdness of animal and vegetable patterns that showed a designer who cared about the planet, not just Planet Fashion. She recalls the first time she met Lee, then an angry and rather fat young man in his East End studio, ankle deep in cuts of fabric, turning his scissors savagely into the cloth he was cutting. Later, he transformed himself into a slimmer and altogether sleeker product and she remembers him cackling with joy as the fashion editors rushed backstage to congratulate him after a truly exceptional show. The imagination and showmanship never drowned out his flawless tailoring, nor the subtle fluidity he learnt during his period in Paris haute couture, she said. I had no doubt and nor did he that he was an artist who just happened to work with clothing and whose shows were extraordinary vaults of the imagination. And above all, that his work was deeply personal.