Alexander McQueen
Alexander McQueen
Lee Alexander McQueen, CBEwas a British fashion designer and couturier. He is known for having worked as chief designer at Givenchy from 1996 to 2001 and for founding his own Alexander McQueen label. His achievements in fashion earned him four British Designer of the Year awards, as well as the CFDA's International Designer of the Year award in 2003. McQueen committed suicide in 2010 at the age of forty...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionFashion Designer
Date of Birth17 March 1969
CityLondon, England
Alexander McQueen quotes about
Fashion is self confident and fearless.
You can only go forward by making mistakes.
I find beauty in the grotesque, like most artists.
For people who know McQueen, there is always an underlying message. It's usually only the intellectual ones who understand what's going on in what I do.
It's almost like putting armor on a woman. It's a very psychological way of dressing.
When we put the antlers on the model and then draped over it the lace embroidery that we had made, we had to poke them through a £2,000 piece of work. But then it worked because it looks like she's rammed the piece of lace with her antlers. There's always spontaneity. You've got to allow for that in my shows.
I used flowers because they die. My mood was darkly romantic at the time.
It is important to look at death because it is a part of life. It is a sad thing, melancholy but romantic at the same time. It is the end of a cycle - everything has to end. The cycle of life is positive because it gives room for new things.
Clothes and jewellery should be startling, individual. When you see a woman in my clothes, you want to know more about them. To me, that is what distinguishes good designers from bad designers.
Menswear is about subtlety. It's about good style and good taste.
I think there has to be an underlying sexuality. There has to be a perverseness to the clothes. There is a hidden agenda in the fragility of romance. It's like a Story of O. I am not big on women looking naive. There has to be a sinister aspect, whether it's melancholy of sadomasochist. I think everyone has a deep sexuality, and sometimes it's good to use a little of it-and sometimes a lot of it-like a masquerade.
People find my things sometimes aggressive. But I don't see it as aggressive. I see it as romantic, dealing with a dark side of personality.
Beauty can come from the strangest of places, even the most disgusting of places,
Clothes and jewellery should be startling, individual.