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
I think I should be a president. President of the United States.
There is something sinister, something quite biographical about what I do - but that part is for me. It's my personal business. I think there is a lot of romance, melancholy. There's a sadness to it, but there's romance in sadness. I suppose I am a very melancholy person.
I can't get sucked into that celebrity thing, because I think it's just crass.
Some designers are so airy-fairy people can't connect with them. I hope people can relate to me, to a normal person who just happens to be a fashion designer, that people can take me as they find me. It's not the designer's job to care about what people think. Whatever else I've done, I've never tried to be something that I'm not.
I think there is beauty in everything.
I come from a different era and I design clothes for our era. I think of people I want to dress when I design.
The turnover of fashion is just so quick and so throwaway, and I think that is a big part of the problem. There is no longevity.
I think sometimes I might scare the editors, because they might feel they're getting old and they're not understanding it. The problem lies on their side of the fence, not mine. I come from a different era and I design clothes for our era.
I think the idea of mixing luxury and mass-market fashion is very modern, very now - no one wears head-to-toe designer anymore.
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.
For a long time I was looking for my perfect equilibrium, my mojo. And now I think I'm getting there: I've found my customer, my silhouette, my cut.
I think there is beauty in everything. What 'normal' people would perceive as ugly, I can usually see something of beauty in it.
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.
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