Alexander McQueen

     The cover story of the Winter 2010 edition of RazorsEdge Magazine was “Bishme Cromartie, The Alexander McQueen of Baltimore.” Imagine our shock when McQueen committed suicide just two weeks later. McQueen’s fashion shows were not just runway, they were performances, and dramatic, and always out of the ordinary. He was a master at creating fashion shows that mixed design and technology.

     Lee Alexander McQueen was a British fashion designer known for his unconventional designs and shock tactics.
     McQueen worked as the head designer at Givenchy for five years before founding the Alexander McQueen and McQ labels.
     His dramatic designs received critical acclaim and earned him the British Designer of the Year four times between 1996 and 2003 and the International Designer of the Year at the Council of Fashion Designer Awards. He received an CBE in 2003.
     Born on 17 March 1969 in Lewisham, London, to Scottish taxi driver Ronald and social science teacher Joyce, McQueen was the youngest of six children.
     He started making dresses for his three sisters at a young age and announced his intention to become a fashion designer.
     McQueen attended Rokeby School and left to serve an apprenticeship with Savile Row tailors Anderson & Sheppard, before joining Gieves & Hawkes and, later, the theatrical costum-iers Angels and Bermans.
     McQueen recounted in an interview that he once sewn ‘I am a cunt’ into the lining of a jacket he was working on for Prince Charles.
     At the age of 20, he spent a period of time working for Koji Tatsuno before travelling to Milan, Italy and working for Romeo Gigli.
     McQueen returned to London in 1994 and applied to Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design, to work as a pattern cutter tutor. Because of the strength of his portfolio he was persuaded to enroll in the course as a student.
     He received his masters degree in fashion design and his gradua-tion collection was bought in its entirety by influential fashion stylist Isabella Blow, with whom he deve-loped a very great friendship.
     McQueen’s early runway collections developed his reputation for controversy and shock tactics, earning the title “L’enfant Terrible” and “The Hooligan of English Fashion.”
     McQueen was known for his lavish, unconventional, runway shows, such as a recreation of a shipwreck for his spring 2003 collection, spring 2005’s human chess game and his fall 2006 show, “Widows of Culloden,” featuring a life-sized hologram of supermodel Kate Moss dressed in yards of rippling fabric.
     McQueen’s “bumsters” (trousers) spawned a trend in low rise jeans. Michael Oliveira-Salac, the director of Blow PR and a friend of McQueen’s said that “The bumster for me is what defined McQueen.”
     McQueen also became known for using skulls in his designs. A scarf bearing the motif became a celebrity “must have” and was copied around the world.