The answer to the question "Why?", Why a successful, talented, surrounded by friends and truly respected colleagues decides to break with life, with their own hands tightening the loop around their necks, at the same time lies on the surface and is not known to anyone. Nobody can know what was happening in the soul of the 40-year-old Lee McQueen (this is the first, "home" name of the designer), from whose life one by one the three closest women forever left. In 2007, he lost his girlfriend, muse, a woman who once believed in him as a real artist - Isabelle Blow. Then he just left for India, abandoning everything, went into himself for a month, and after returning, he introduced the collection to the world, "The Girl Who Lived on the Tree." It turned out that this was all he could do for her now. A year ago Aunt Dolly left.
This name is known only to a narrow circle of friends of the great designer Alexander McQueen, but for him his owner meant a lot. A small woman who did not miss a single show of Lee. And on February 2, 2010 his adored mother Joyce McQueen died. Since the death of McQueen on February 11, only the lazy man has not quoted an interview with his son, dated 2004, for one of the leading British newspapers. "What are you afraid of more than anything else in the world?" "Die before you." "Thank you, son." What are you most proud of? "By you." These words are remembered by journalists, friends recall another: "He loved to come to my mother and drink tea and biscuits while she was sitting on the sofa with her." Losing loved ones usually seek support from loved ones. But the man who was loved by Lee McQueen, left him six months before his mother's death.
Stand up for oneself
A three-year-old boy, he painted on the wallpaper pupae in ball dresses. The son of a taxi driver, the youngest of six children, born in one of the working districts of East London. The electrician, the machinist, the taxi driver at best - these are the prospects that awaited him. Studying at a local school for boys with its cruel orders could not change them for the better. The only useful thing was that later it helped the great designer Alexander McQueen to withstand: "The main rule is this: always be ready to take the fight ... You must be able to stand up for yourself. And even if you did not win, you still played! "After leaving school, he tried many works: from the messenger at the customs to the seller in the theater bookstore. Until one day, Alexander's mother saw a documentary about male tailors and remembered the children's drawings on the wall. In the men's studio at Savile Rou they just recruited students. Here, in the workshops where they sewed costumes for Mikhail Gorbachev and the Prince of Wales, day after day for three years doing tailoring of jackets and trousers, he learned the most important thing - design, cut and respect for the craft. "It was an excellent training. Since then I like craft and I think that nothing is more important in our business. In my collections, even this pret-a-porter, everything is done by hand. That's why they look so much like Haute Couture. "
Then there was Milan . "I wanted to see how they work in fashion for real. To see and learn. " Teacher was Romeo Gigli, whom McQueen, contrary to the opinion of the majority, considered the leader among designers of the early 80's. Then - the famous Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design, where McQueen, according to rumors, even before his arrival came with a bold suggestion of himself as a teacher. His thesis collection was bought in full and immediately after the show for £ 5,000. It was such a sum inherited from his father, an extravagant aristocrat millionaire, the eccentric editor of the British magazine Tattler Isabella Blow.
Awakening the senses
Having an impeccable taste and a huge authority in the fashion world, Isabella always told everyone that the great designer Alexander McQueen is destined to become the most popular designer of the 21st century. Her care was not limited to enthusiastic exclamations. Soon McQueen moved to an abandoned house on Belgrava Square, which Blow found for him and his friend Philip Tracy. Here the history of the brand Alexander McQueen began. The first shows caused the effect of a bomb that exploded. These were unforgettable enchanting performances, recreating entire worlds on the podium. "When I make a collection, I already have a story in my head ... I see everything, right up to the make-up, entourage and, of course, music. Any digression into history is impressive, and fashion should impress! "After the first season everyone was eager to get on his show. "People who never took an interest in fashion filled the gallery like at rock concerts," the newspapers wrote. "Nihilism", "Birds", "Forward to the jungle" - successful collections followed one after another. And soon - sensational news: the conservative bourgeois House Givenchy - a symbol of French elegance - is given into the hands of this "frenzied punk", in the shows of which cars were driving along the podium, it was raining, robots sprayed paint from spray guns on dresses of mannequins, and used as a dead locusts.
His first fashion show for the Givenchy House was met aggressively by the French press. McQueen did not follow the traditional way for such cases, copying the Givenchy style, but offered his own vision. And it had nothing to do with the image of Audrey Hepburn, who typified the House style for most. He took a chance and was not mistaken. Very soon in Givenchy lined up a line of clients who previously preferred other designers, the skeptics had to remain silent.
At that time, he twice becomes the designer of the year in Britain, arranges a brilliant show in the Moscow metro, forcing the audience in diamonds from Carder to go down into the subway for the first time in his life. "I was eager to show them what they did not want to see: hunger, blood, poverty," McQueen admitted. - You look at all this fashion-party in dark glasses and you understand that they have no idea about what is happening in the world. Let them feel hatred and disgust-it suits me perfectly. I will know that at least some feelings have awakened them. " After the inevitable parting with Givenchy, McQueen's talent only gained new strength.
He spoke with the world of his collections. His dress was shouting about the famine and millions of deaths in Africa, about the slow death of the planet, what was his home, about indifference, in which all are mired - rich and poor. But fashion critics, clients, townsfolk mostly saw only shoes of strange shape, narrow waist, lace and too complicated, impossible to replicate the cut. "He thinks like a devil, but he cuts like an angel," they wrote about him.
The unearthly beauty of his dresses, the show, each of which, like scuba diving into the depths of the ocean (the designer's favorite pastime), a complicated cut and simple, understandable to everyone who is ready to hear, thoughts are all that remains of us from Alexander McQueen. "I will be happy only when I stop practicing fashion," Lee once said ...