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
When I'm dead and gone, people will know that the twenty-first century was started by Alexander McQueen.
It's a new era in fashion - there are no rules. It's all about the individual and personal style, wearing high-end, low-end, classic labels, and up-and-coming designers all together.
The reason I'm patriotic about Scotland is because I think it's been dealt a really hard hand. It's marketed the world over as . . . haggis . . . bagpipes. But no one ever puts anything back into it.
Birds in flight fascinate me. I admire eagles and falcons. I’m inspired by a feather but also its color, its graphics, its weightlessness and its engineering. It’s so elaborate. In fact I try and transpose the beauty of a bird to women.
Fashion is self confident and fearless.
I am an avid follower of the news, and sometimes you just can't take any more war, any more disasters, and you want to remind yourself there's beauty in the world. I wanted to show a more poetic side to my work. It was all about... a feeling of sadness, but in a cinematic kind of way. I find beauty in melancholy.
I use things that people want to hide in their heads. War, religion, sex; things we all think about, but don’t bring to the forefront. But I do and I force them to watch it
I want people to be afraid of the women I dress.
For me, what I do is an artistic expression which is channeled through me. Fashion is just the medium.
If you're lucky enough to use something you see in a dream, it is purely original. It's not in the world - it's in your head. I think that is amazing.
The world needs fantasy, not reality. We have enough reality today
Let me not forget the use of my own hands, that of a craftsman with eyes... that reflect the technology around me.
Fashion should be a form of escapism, and not a form of imprisonment.
People don't want to see clothes, they want to see something that fuels the imagination