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A L E X A N D E R M C Q U E E N |
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Alexander McQueen has spent a decade wiping the smiles off fashion-industry faces. In 1993, when the Londoner—now one of international fashion's great talents—launched himself, it was with a tiny fashion collection in an upstairs room. He showed a sensible skirt—printed with images of an electric chair.
The 34-year-old remains edgy, untamed. What makes him a pioneer is the grimness of his vision. At times it reveals too much of the backstory of the gay son of a London taxi driver who grew up in welfare housing and whose sister would run home when she had been battered by her husband. No wonder McQueen's creativity has always reeked not of the innocence of youth or joyful fripperies but of brutal experience.
He posed for a portrait with a plastic bag over his face. He took a bow with his butt hanging out of his pants. He made models walk over pebbles while gripping spiked dental braces in their mouths. The front-row set at his shows is as tense as cats.
That this macabre imagination is coupled with dazzling craftsmanship gives the designer his heat. Beneath the shock of his antics is a natural talent coupled with technique acquired as a teenage trainee on Savile Row, the London street celebrated for handmade suits. After an apprenticeship of Dickensian harshness, McQueen harnessed his skills to the construction of cunning jackets, curved to just conceal the breasts, and trousers, called "bumsters," slung so low as to be rude.
When Hollywood calls—Kate Winslet, Cate Blanchett and Cameron Diaz have worn his clothes—McQueen can provide glamour on request. Recently his creations have revealed great sensitivity to the feel and fall of fabric. The word pretty could even be used—but not to his face. Although McQueen now has his first fragrance and even a property portfolio, don't expect this uncompromising frontiersman to go soft.
—By Marion Hume
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