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“Give me time and I’ll give you a revolution.“

Quick Facts

Name: Lee Alexander McQueen, called “Lee” by his friends for most of his life. Often called l’enfant terrible (the terrible child) and “the hooligan of English fashion.

Life: Born on March 17, 1969, in London, the youngest of 6 children. His father, Ronald, was a cab driver, and his mother, Joyce, taught social science. Nine days after his mother passed away on February 2, 2010, Alexander McQueen committed suicide at his home in London.

Early years: Openly gay since a very early age, he was spurned by his father, bullied and teased by his classmates and left school in 1986 at the age of 16.

Tattoo: “Love looks not with the eyes, but with his mind” from Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream on his upper right arm.

First job: Goes on to apprentice on Savile Row, a neighbourhood in London known for men’s bespoke tailoring, offering made-to-order suits. First works for Anderson & Sheppard – tailor to Prince of Wales, then for Gieves and Hawkes.

Rebel: Reportedly wrote “I am a c**t” into the lining of a suit he made for Prince Charles.

Education: McQueen earned a Master’s Degree from Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design

Thesis: His graduate collection titled Jack the Ripper Stalkes His Victims (1992) was the introduction of McQueen to the fashion world. The collection referenced genealogy and the Whitechapel murders of the East End serial killer, Jack the Ripper. One of McQueen’s relatives reportedly owned an inn that housed a victim of Jack the Ripper. Isabella Blow (an aristocratic style guru and former Fashion Editor of Vogue) acquires the entire collection.

Hair: Locks of hair were sewn into the lining of the clothing. McQueen later cut his own hair, put it in perspex, and sewed it into the labels of his early works.

“The inspiration behind the hair came from Victorian times when prostitutes would sell theirs for kits of hair locks, which were bought by people to give to their lovers. I used it as my signature label with locks of hair in Perspex. In the early collections, it was my own hair. “ – Alexander McQueen

British Designer of the Year: Awarded four British Fashion Awards for British Designer of the Year in 1996, 1997, 2001, and 2003.

Council of Fashion Designers of America:  Awarded the international designer of the year by the Council of Fashion Designers of America in 2003.

The “Bumster” look: Introduced in his first collection in London, titled Taxi Driver. He says: “[With ‘bumsters’] I wanted to elongate the body, not just show the bum. To me, that part of the body – not so much the buttocks, but the bottom of the spine – that’s the most erotic part of anyone’s body, man or woman.”

Givenchy: Aged 27, McQueen accepts the position of creative director at Givenchy and keeps it for four years. As he was pressured to tone down his rebellion and to keep the French house aesthetics, the designer was definitely out of his comfort zone, and his collections for Givenchy weren’t very successful. For Guardian, later on he reflects: ” It was just money to me, but there was nothing I could do: the only way it would have worked would have been if they had allowed me to change the whole concept of the house, to give it a new identity, and they never wanted me to do that.”

Revolution: Aimee Mullins, a Paralympic athlete and double amputee, opens No.13 his Spring/Summer Show 1999, wearing beautifully carved wooden prosthetic legs. She is the first amputee on an international fashion runway.

THE QUEEN: In 2003, McQueen was awarded a CBE (Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire) by the Queen for his contributions to the British fashion industry.

Pop artists’ favourite: Björk wore an early design for the cover of her album Homogenic, David Bowie had McQueen’s distressed Union Jack coat on the cover of his 1997 album Earthling, Lady Gaga wore his gold Armadillo 12-inch platforms in her video for Bad Romance.

Why Alexander McQueen?

Undeniably, Lee Alexander McQueen was one of the most influential, provocative and creative designers, perhaps not only of his generation, but of all time. Not only are his clothes perfectly designed, constructed and sewn, but they also have a significant expressive value according to cultural identity. McQueen was an outside-of-the-box thinker who saw the world in a romantically melancholic way, and instead of restricting his mind only to the physical side of the clothing garment, he explored various conceptual and ideological possibilities. Clothing was his way to address issues related to religion, race, class, sexuality, fashion, environment and gender. However, the main inspiration for McQueen is namely, the violence and sexual abuse against women.

As revealed by his sister, Janet McQueen, she was one of the main inspirations behind McQueen’s work, as she was severely beaten by her first husband, who was also sexually abusing him.

“I want to empower women. I want people to be afraid of the women I dress.”

The main stigma McQueen riots against is that of the feminine sex, and he is striving to prove that female sexuality is not a weakness, but the exact opposite, and women do not need men to be strong and powerful. Through his designs, he embraces the feminine characteristics women bear since their birth and uses them as a form of empowerment. In contrast with Chanel, for instance, who was incorporating masculine elements into women’s clothing, McQueen believes that women’s biggest advantage and power is just being women. He creates the twenty-first-century femme fatale, who can protect herself from everyone who tries to impose gender norms or stereotypes upon her, as she has permission to attack while she is using the power of her own sensuality.

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