Alexander McQueen

Lee Alexander McQueen was born in London in 1969. The youngest of six children, he grew up in the East End, where his father worked as a taxi driver. At sixteen he began learning tailoring on Savile Row, acquiring the precision that would underpin his most extravagant designs.

After completing his master’s degree at Central Saint Martins in 1992, he found an early champion in Isabella Blow, who bought his graduate collection. Shows such as “Highland Rape” (1995) combined historical references, unsettling imagery and exacting cuts. In 1996 he became chief designer at Givenchy while continuing his own label.

McQueen won the British Designer of the Year award four times. His runway shows became theatrical events: robots spray-painted a dress, models appeared inside a glass box, and an illusion of Kate Moss floated above the stage. “Plato’s Atlantis”, presented in 2009 for spring/summer 2010, imagined a future shaped by humanity’s return to the sea.

Openly gay, McQueen brought vulnerability as well as confrontation to his public image. He died by suicide in February 2010, shortly after his mother’s death. The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s 2011 retrospective, “Savage Beauty”, introduced his work to a vast audience beyond fashion.