45: Alexander McQueen • Woven in Shadows (Part 2)

 

Alexander McQueen discovered the purpose of his life at the age of 21. More than anything else in the world, he wanted to be a fashion designer. McQueen had spent years working as a pattern cutter and a design assistant for other people in several fashion firms. But now he finally knew what he wanted: to have his own clothing line, to stage his own collections that would garner media attention and give people something to talk about—whether it was praise or disgust, it didn’t matter to him—that wasn’t the point. His first motivation was to create clothes of such bold originality that they would shock people. That was the driving force of his creativity.

1990’s fashion had reached a dead end, it was a stale and predictable market—the same tired collection rehashed and sold year-after-year. If only he could be given a chance, McQueen believed he could change the world. But how difficult a burden that is—to know, in your bones, that you carry something groundbreaking inside of you, if only someone would give you a chance…How difficult it is—to be discovered.

Human history teaches us that: a fraud is slowly found out and a genius is slowly discovered.

But what if you’re never discovered? What if you attempt the climb to the peak of Mount Everest and slip near the summit? Well, that’s the risk isn’t it? If pursuing your dreams was easy, if there were no sacrifices to be made along the way, would achieving your dreams really be so great?

To be driven by a passion, the way Alexander McQueen is, at 21 in 1990, is both a blessing and a burden.

Welcome to Creative Codex, I am your host, MJDorian.

This is Part 2 of my Alexander McQueen • Woven in Shadows series. If you haven’t yet listened to Part 1, I suggest you pause this episode and scroll down in the podcast feed to episode 44.

That one lays the groundwork about McQueen’s childhood and his early years as a creative, plus his years working on Savile Row and various fashion houses as a pattern cutter and assistant.

On this episode, we will answer these questions: What made Alexander McQueen’s first collections so special? Why did people see them as both revolutionary and controversial? And we’ll arrive at one of the most exciting moments in McQueen’s life and work: the moment he’s discovered.

Let’s begin.

Chapter 3: How difficult it is—to be discovered

Lee Alexander McQueen walks down a long hallway in Central St. Martins College of Arts and Design. This is the first time he’s stepped foot in a university in his 21 years, and the whole atmosphere feels foreign to him. His education in fashion—up to this point—has been hands on, in the real world of measuring, weaving, and cutting fabrics.

He brings with him the evidence of that education—clothes—which he drapes over his arm. Lee is here to see the director of the Master of Arts department, Bobby Hillson. He knocks on her door and waits…Hillson opens it and says “Can I help you? Who are you here to see?”

Lee replies: “You.”

Hillson says: “But I don’t have an appointment with anyone.”

Lee explains that he is here under John McKitterick’s recommendation. McKitterick is a designer whom Lee has recently been working for who also happens to teach one of the masters courses at St. Martins. Hillson invites him in but admits she only has five minutes. To add to Hillson’s confusion, this young man is not looking for an education, he is looking for work.

In the documentary, Cutting Up Rough, Bobby Hillson recounts that meeting, saying:

“It was pretty extraordinary because you know, you interview endless students to decide who you will take on the course and they come to you from all over the world. And with Alexander he just arrived—walked into my office with a bundle of clothes and asked me to give him a job. He wasn’t thinking of joining the course and I was intrigued. So we talked a bit more and then I said ‘did he design himself, did he draw?’ And yes, he said ‘I’ve always drawn.’ And I said ‘well, I haven’t time to go on talking to you but if you like, come back, and see me with some drawings because you know, it might be a good idea if you took this course.” [end cue]

At Hillson’s request, Lee returns the next day with drawings and more clothes. And to his surprise, she offers him a place in the Master of Arts course. This is entirely unexpected because Lee doesn’t have any of the requisite qualifications to take such a course, after all he never completed a Bachelor’s degree in fashion.

But Hillson recognizes that Lee has had years of work experience in the field, and that can be counted as an equivalent to years of university study. To an outside observer, it may not be obvious, but to someone who is around students and artists everyday, and who can spot that spark of talent, Lee has tremendous potential. Remembering the scene later she says: “…if he cares this much he’s got to be given a chance.”

Hillson sends him to the dean of fashion and textiles and tells her “Jane, I’ve taken somebody on; he’s got none of the right qualifications, he’ll probably leave in the middle, but I’m taking him.”

And so, Lee is given a chance.

But now, he faces another problem. He doesn’t have the money for the Masters course, not even close. And the financial aid for incoming students has already been disbursed. Lee returns home crestfallen, he doesn’t have the funds and neither do his parents. Word spreads around the family, likely hastened by his mother, Joyce, and to everyone’s surprise, Lee’s aunt, Renee offers to pay for his tuition—she had come into an inheritance after the death of her father. She loans Lee four thousand pounds, which will cover the 18 months long course. Four thousand pounds in 1990 is equivalent to 9,333 pounds today, which converts to roughly $11,700.

Lee’s sister later says this about his aunt: “Renee used to work in the rag trade, as a seamstress in the East End. She was very aware of Lee’s ability in the early days. She spotted it early and I think Lee made Renee a couple of dresses and she was over the moon with these. She knew that he could cut, she was pleased with how the material hung, how it fitted the body. So with Renee’s help, Lee was able to enroll on the course.”

And so, Lee’s formal education begins. Being in a class of other aspiring fashion designers feels like a homecoming for him. For the first time, he feels he is surrounded by likeminded people who share his interests and passions. He later confesses “It was an exciting period for me because it showed me there were other people out there like me.”

There’s really nothing quite like that feeling of being the weird art kid all your life, and finally going to an art school, only to find out, there’s other weirdos out there—just-like-you. Central St. Martins certainly attracted talented weirdos, the model of education in the college fostered a spirit of creativity and collaboration. Graduates of the school include the artist Lucian Freud, the actor John Hurt, and singer-songwriter PJ Harvey, to name a few.

Students who attended the same Masters course as McQueen remember the impression that he left on the class. The book, Blood Beneath the Skin states:

“‘From day one people either loved Lee or hated him.’ said Rebecca Barton, another student on the MA course. She remembers a day early on in the course when the students had to present a collection to the group. Lee had stood up and talked about how he had drawn inspiration from Eskimos—the clothes featured large coats with big hoods in white leather. ‘Then Lee hammered into everybody else, saying, ‘This is crap, you haven’t done this or that.’ Some people were really upset by his behavior and I think a lot of people found him quite difficult. But I thought he was lovely. We got on because we were both quite sarky, I think.”

Another student recalls that Lee ‘disliked most designers, but he loved Helmut Lang, Rei Kawakubo and Martin Margiela.’ And that whenever the opportunity presents itself to learn anything about textile work, such as when a fellow student is working on embroidery in class, Lee asks loads of questions and vacuums up that knowledge.

His informal brashness rubs some people the wrong way, but at times it works to his advantage. The book, Blood Beneath the Skin goes on:

“Sometimes in the middle of talks by visiting designers or lecturers, Lee would interrupt and start to argue a point. Some students found this so uncomfortable that they went to Bobby Hillson to complain. Hillson recalls ‘A little group, three or so students, found it embarrassing and they said to me, ‘Bobby, why did you take him?’ And I said because I think he’s enormously talented and told the, that I thought he would settle down. He was a really intelligent boy, just badly educated. He didn’t know how to behave, but that was what was interesting.’

There were times, however, when McQueen’s street-savvy attitude paid off. Rebecca Barton remembers one occasion when a designer visited the college and asked the students to work on a particular project. She said ‘Lee refused to do it because he said this designer was just going to nick our ideas. He was really cynical, but you know what? I did this t-shirt with a red cross on it and it got nicked by that designer and sold everywhere. Lee said, ‘I told you that was going to happen, you are such a loser.’”

Despite Lee’s snarkiness, or perhaps because of it, Rebecca and Lee do become good friends. The book continues:

“Often on Friday nights, Lee would meet up with Rebecca at a pizza restaurant near the college in Soho. The friends would take advantage of an Evening Standard offer of two-for-one pizzas—‘I would be the one who paid full price and he would be the one who paid a penny.’ said Rebecca. It was here one night that Lee told her about the sexual abuse he had suffered as a child. ‘He didn’t tell me in any detail about what went on but I know it wasn’t just a one-off,’ she said.

Rebecca (also) remembers that while they were at Saint Martins, Lee organized a surprise birthday party for her at a Soho pub and once he gave her a present of a necklace that he had made and a strange black-and-white photograph of himself, naked from the waist up, wrapped in what looked like cling film. On the back of the photo he scribbled ’To my dearest Becca. Lot of love, Lee x.’ ‘He was a complete poppet,’ she said. ‘He was lovely and funny and naughty.’”

Aside from making new friends, St. Martins helped to hone Lee’s opinions about fashion and gave him the tools to communicate his vision. The director, Bobby Hillson, who took a chance on him for the program said this:

“There was evidently real talent and determination, and what struck one was that he was desperate to communicate ideas—they came tumbling out—but he was rather inarticulate. You sensed the emotion and intelligence coming through, but he had not had a conventional education that would have helped this happen.

All that talent came via a very complicated personality. From the beginning it was obvious he was different, but he struggled. He found many of the requirements difficult, like writing and the nature of educational bureaucracy. He had something special, otherwise he wouldn’t have got onto the course in the first place.”

Another friend named Tania recounts this about Lee: “I adored him straight away, he was such good fun. He always wanted to make me clothes and I will never forget the sight of him sitting by his sewing machine. He was so absorbed, like someone with a mania, like a lunatic.

I told him that some of the outfits he had made for me would take five people to help me get into them, and that some of the clothes were unwearable. He replied ‘You cheeky bloody cow.’”

When fashion shows were happening in Paris, some of the students, including Lee, would travel there with the mission of sneaking in to the shows without tickets. Both to scout the current trends and to critique the designs. It was like a rite of passage for students of Central St. Martins.

Rebecca recalls that one time they attended a show by the world famous haute couture French brand, Givenchy. She said it was filled with ‘horrible dresses with floral designs.’ And Lee told her “I can’t believe you’ve made me go to this show. It’s really crap. I would never design for a place like this.” At that time, Givenchy would never have considered hiring someone like McQueen either, but within five years, that was going to change.

The second half of Lee’s time at St. Martins was a bit rocky, as the director of the department, Bobby Hillson, who had supported Lee’s admission into the program, was replaced by someone new, Louise Wilson. There was no love lost between Lee and Louise.

The book, Blood Beneath the Skin states:

“He had many clashes with Louise, because they were actually quite similar; they were both control freaks,’ said Reva.

One project involved designing an outfit for Dame Shirley Porter, the Lord Mayor of Westminster, but Lee refused to take part because ‘he said he wasn’t going to make clothes for anyone who was privileged and who wasn’t prepared to pay for them.’

Although Louise subsequently admitted that she could be brutally honest, McQueen felt that at times he was being bullied by her. ‘If she could have got rid of Lee she would have got rid of him,’ said one fellow student. ‘He could do his work in two minutes. He could sketch a pattern by eye. And the pattern tutor would tell him it was not good enough, but then he would make the toile and it would fit perfectly the person it was made for. But still they would say you’ve done it the wrong way. I think they were jealous of his talent. But Lee always knew he would be a success—there was never an unwavering doubt in his mind.”

The term ‘toile’ that is mentioned in that quote refers to a kind of test garment which a designer creates to test out the fit and sizing of the clothing before creating it in more expensive fabrics.

That quote also mentions something interesting about Lee’s unique talents which we should appreciate for a moment. One of the things you see mentioned time and again in these anecdotes is Lee’s ability to measure a human form by eyesight alone, then skip the integral stage of physically measuring, planning, and laying out the fabric that is typical for all other designers, instead, proceeding straight to cutting the material.

This is a skill that requires both tremendous experience (which Lee had by this point) working and measuring fabrics on the human form, but also an incredibly high spatial intelligence. As you can imagine, the ability to look at a human form, and be able to visualize an outfit, then transfer that fully three dimensional mental image onto a flat fabric, knowing what you intend it to look like, and begin cutting it without any setup—that is not normal. And that is not something anyone can teach you, even at an expensive university. It comes from a combination of work experience, high spatial intelligence, and high creativity.

As the 18 month Masters course nears its end, Lee begins to put together ideas for his final thesis—a collection of clothes which will be shown at the Central St. Martins ‘end-of-the-year’ fashion show. The show gives every graduate an opportunity to not only display their technical ability, but more importantly, showcase their unique creative vision. This is a chance for Lee to finally shine, his first show. An opportunity for models to walk his designs down the catwalk.

Where many students may feel inclined to ‘play it safe’ under all the pressure, and make a collection that perhaps appeals to current trends. Lee is already possessed by a darker creative vision, and he is emboldened by this opportunity to showcase his ideas to a captive audience.

The students are each encouraged to choose a theme for their final thesis collections. McQueen chooses the Jack the Ripper murders. Yes. Not exactly the kind of subject matter that gets you a contract with Disney or Target.

So why does McQueen choose this morbid topic? The Jack the Ripper theme is meaningful to him for several reasons. For one, he was always fascinated by the darker aspects of human experience, for example: one of his favorite movies at this time is Silence of the Lambs, and one of his favorite books is Perfume by Patrick Süskind. Perfume is a novel that follows a social outcast who is a perfumer, who murders virgins in a quest to create the perfect perfume. Curious side note, this was also one of Kurt Cobain’s favorite books.

Lee’s friend Rebecca said this about Lee and that book: “The character in that book is him, all visceral with all his senses heightened. He liked nasty rawness, but of course he balanced that with complete beauty.”

Another aspect to the Jack the Ripper theme that draws Lee to it is his personal family history. His mother, Joyce, is an armchair historian, it’s a personal passion of hers to trace the family tree back through the centuries. She once discovered that the name Alexander frequently appears throughout the family line, including one instance of a relative named Alexander McQueen, who is listed in a 1851 census report. This Alexander McQueen lived on Dorset Street with his wife and daughter. Dorset Street, in Joyce’s words was: “one of the most notorious streets in the area, where few dared to stray for for fear of being robbed or assaulted.” It was on this very street in East London, in 1888, that Jack the Ripper murdered at least five women.

A case that was never solved, leaving with it a certain mystery that also sparks Lee’s imagination. Perhaps he also associates himself as a type of Jack the Ripper figure, for his tendency to cut and slash fabrics, oftentimes while they are being worn by his models.

And the final reason the Jack the Ripper theme attracts Lee is due to his love for studying the fashion of the distant past. During his research for his graduate collection he acquires an enormous reference book of Victorian clothing, and he studies it often. Some hallmarks of the time period include a high collar, tailored sleeves, capes and corseted women’s coats. As Lee is laying out his first designs for the collection he realizes he will need help with jewelry and garment dying.

For jewelry he reaches out to the jeweler, Simon Costin, through a handwritten letter. Lee had seen his work in the pages of fashion magazines such as i-D and The Face. Costin lends him seven necklaces, including two large pieces made from bird skulls. For garment dying, he turns to Simon Ungless, a fellow student at St. Martins. McQueen will continue to work with both of them after he graduates.

Lee titles the collection, Jack the Ripper Stalks His Victims, it debuts in July 1992 at London’s Kensington Olympia exhibition center. McQueen’s dark Victorian inspired looks are unlike anything the fashion savvy audience have seen and they leave a lasting impression.

The book, Alexander McQueen, The Life and Legacy describes some of the designs, stating:

“It was punk’s furious outrage reborn but instead of referencing contemporary subcultures, his source came from deep inside. A black tight-waisted jacket with a rear-enhancing peplum was in black silk, the lining decorated with human hair. Another coat in cherry pink silk (with barbed thorn print by Simon Ungless) was cut tight to the body, Anderson & Sheppard-style, with tight sleeves; the interior with a layer of hair.

The prostitutes killed by the Ripper would have all been wearing frayed and torn secondhand clothes, so McQueen distressed the calico skirt with burn marks and papier-mâchéd magazine articles onto it. The Ripper, in mad vanity, ensured he became a celebrity serial killer via the press; the red paint was spattered liberally to denote blood.

This was not the charming historicism of Vivianne Westwood but something more complex and multilayered. ‘His facility was that he could interpret whatever inspired him,’ Bobby Hilson remembers, ‘it was undiluted and absolutely his own.’

Certainly, there was no compromise regarding the ideas—McQueen later said ‘I had the freedom to block off commercialism and do it from the heart.’”

Another account of someone seeing Lee’s Jack the Ripper designs comes from John McKitterick, the person who first recommended that Lee attend Central St. Martins. McKitterick gives a very thoughtful account, saying:

“What I distinctly remember is that if you looked at the collection from the side rather than from the front, you saw this extraordinary silhouette, a bird-like silhouette.”

In this quote, John McKitterick is referring to something which will become a signature of McQueen’s later designs: a focus on silhouette. What is silhouette in fashion terms? In its most basic sense it is the contour line of the figure who is wearing an outfit. It is the manner in which the outfit’s design alters, accentuates, or transforms the individual’s body outline. For example, look at a person standing, now don’t focus on the details but rather on the negative space around their body.

How does their clothing alter, accentuate, or transform their body? Most clothing for women accentuates the hips and lengthens the legs, often by moving the perceived waistline higher, most clothing for men, narrows the hips and broadens the shoulders. But there is so much more that clothing can do to not only accentuate but transform the body. This is partially what McQueen was uniquely interested in.

And you can already see it in his graduate collection. I’ve provided a video of his Jack the Ripper Stalks His Victims collection on the Creative Codex YouTube channel. It’s the only known video and for some reason it’s currently not included anywhere else on YouTube. You can also find it on mjdorian.com/mcqueen.

There are ten looks McQueen creates for the show. If we look at the third look and the ninth look, we can see that the concept of transforming the silhouette is already in his mind as early as this collection. The third model is wearing a bell shaped skirt that arches outward, it’s covered in papier-mached magazine photos. But notice also how he has elongated the front panel corners of the black suit jacket in long points that extend all the way to the models feet. And he has raised the tail of the jacket horizontally, making it appear like a bird’s tail, this must be what McKitterick is referring to—the ‘bird-like silhouette’. Then notice the second to last model, the one with the red scarf, the base of her suit jacket protrudes outward at a diagonal, rather than lying flat against her hips. Both of these instances transform the body’s silhouette.

There are other startling details to the clothes as well. The garments include human hair—rather than creating standard labels for the clothes, the inside labels are locks of McQueen’s hair encased behind clear plastic. One jacket even has hair sewn inside of the lining, which, when light shines through it, can be seen like snakes slithering under the surface. What is the purpose of this?

In an interview with Time Out magazine, in 1997, McQueen says this:

“The inspiration for the hair came from Victorian times when prostitutes would sell theirs for kits of hair locks, which were bought by people to give to their lovers. I used it as my signature label with locks of hair in Perspex. In the early collections it was my own hair; it was about me giving myself to the collection.”

Of all of McQueen’s collections, Jack the Ripper Stalks His Victims is the hardest one to find any documentation of. Any related photos are from museum exhibitions decades later, specifically of the notorious frock coat with the barbed wire print. And there is no video available online. We have to content ourselves with these secondhand reports from people who were in the audience.

And we know there were three very special people in attendance. The first, was his mother, Joyce, who saw this as the pinnacle of Lee’s success so far. The second was his aunt, Renee, who had lent him the money to cover his tuition for attending St. Martins. And the third was Isabella Blow, a stylist who worked for Vogue and who had connections to the who’s who of the fashion industry.

Lee didn’t know it yet, but earning Isabella Blow’s attention was no small feat—it meant that he was on the verge of being discovered—and within three years he would be the most talked about designer in the world.

Recalling that first show from 1992, Isabella Blow said this in the documentary, Cutting Up Rough:

“I was sitting on the floor, I couldn’t even get a seat at the Saint Martins show, and the pieces went past me and they moved in a way I had never seen and I wanted them. They were modern and they were classical. The colors were very extreme. He would do a black coat, but then he’d line it with human hair and it was blood red inside so it was like a body—like the flesh, with the blood. And I just thought, this is the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen…I just knew he had something really special, very modern, it was about sabotage and tradition.”

 

INTERMISSION:

And now it’s time for a brief intermission…

If you’re enjoying this Alexander McQueen series, I have one small favor to ask of you: please—share it with someone. This show started five years ago as a passion project and it continues as a passion project. And the only way it grows is with your help.

As I was researching for this McQueen series, I realized that it would be helpful to have a resource somewhere online that brings together all the photos and collections which we have talked about and will be talking about. You really need to see McQueen’s work to fully appreciate his genius. And so I’ve put together a companion gallery on my website. It will serve as a helpful visual guide for this episode as well as the next one. For example, I’ve brought together some of the few photos of McQueen’s graduate collection, Jack the Ripper Stalks His Victims, so you can see what Isabella Blow saw. You can find that by heading to mjdorian.com/mcqueen, that’s mjdorian.com/mcqueen. I’ve included a link in the episode description.

If you’d like to become a patron of the show and gain access to the Red Book Reading series, the Kurt Cobain series, and a host of other exclusives, please head on over to my Patreon, at patreon.com/mjdorian. The link for that is also in the episode description. And I thank you in advance for that.

At this point of the episode, in most podcasts, you’d hear an ad… That’s why today’s episode is sponsored by: LimbEx-Plus.

“Limb-Ex Plus!

Do you suffer from average limb syndrome?

Do you wish your left leg was seven inches longer? Well, Limb-Ex Plus is here!

No more reaching for the cereal box on your tippy toes, no more standing on a milk crate just to wash your hands. Apply the patented Limb-Ex Plus patch to any limb and watch it grow 7 inches in 7 days—guaranteed. :: under breath :: Patent pending.

• Wait wait…hold on. Jimmy, what the hell is this? Uh huh. I’ve never heard of Limbex-plus. (Phrase it differently, limbex, don’t enunciate the limb) Uh huh, it’s on TikTok? Well, if it’s on TikTok. Alright. Just edit this out, ok?

LimbEx-Plus!!

What’s that you say? But Dorian, how does it work?

Well, Limb-Ex Plus is made from a secret formula of all natural organically sourced GMO free herbal remedies mixed with an experimental growth hormone sourced from dolphin juice.

Put this simple patch on any limb—even the long ones—and watch it grow 7 inches in 7 days. Goodbye average limbs!

• Geez, I can’t do this. Jimmy, where is this product from? What’s dolphin juice? It sounds really illegal. Thailand? Do we really want to—they paid how much? (Surprised.) Really?

LimbEx-Plus!!!

Now, I know what you’re thinking: Dorian, is this even legal?

Well, is freedom legal?

Exactly.

What’s that you say: but Dorian, does Limb-Ex Plus work on any limb?

Yes! It works on your legs, it works on your toes, it works on your hands, and maybe your nose.

Unfortunately the things it doesn’t work on are nipples and penises. I found out the hard way! (Lower voice stupidly.)

• What the hell? For f—’s sake. Who wrote this copy? Jimmy, this is atrocious. You can’t expect me to read this. Phillis? Phillis wrote this? :: deep breath of resignation :: Geez, no wonder. What? We’re live?

LimbEx-Pluuuuus!!!

Want to impress the ladies with your ‘surprisingly long arms’? (quoting as if compliment said type phrasing) Slap a patch on.

Applying for a job as a Slenderman? Slap a patch on.

You want a ‘leg up’ on the basketball court? LimbEx Plus it.

Wanna dress up like Dhalsim for Halloween? “Yoga fire.” That’s racist (Dorian voice)… Slap a patch on.

Side effects may include: rapid limb loss, crispy spine, an unexplainable urge to listen to house music, and recurring nightmares about dolphins.

LimbEx-Plus. Slap a patch on. And say goodbye to average limbs.

[end ad]

And now back to Codex 45: Alexander McQueen • Woven in Shadows (Part 2)

Chapter Four: Alexander is Born

In the days following the St. Martins graduate fashion show, Isabella Blow becomes obsessed with one thing—finding the designer of the Jack the Ripper collection. She has to meet him, has to find out who he is. After calling the university, Blow makes her way there on a day when she knows Lee will be in class.

She waltzes into the building wearing a pair of ‘black-fringed Gaultier trousers’ and high heels.

Entering the class, she makes a startling first impression—Blow never leaves home without overdressing for every occasion. She asks for Lee Alexander McQueen. They shake hands as she confesses her adoration for his work. This spectacle sets him back a little, no one has ever expressed such strong emotions for his creative work. She also tells him she works as an editor for Vogue magazine. Lee’s friend, Reva, is there to witness this first meeting, she recounts:

“She kept saying she wanted to buy his collection, but he was very skeptical about it all, whether she would really buy it. She was very flamboyant about who she knew, all her connections, and Lee thought she was pretty crazy.”

He was still living in his parent’s home at the time, so he gave her his mother’s number. Blow called the next day, as she said she would, but Lee wasn’t home, so she called the next day, and the day after that. Joyce was starting to wonder ‘who is this loony lady stalking my son?’

After ringing six times a day, Blow finally spoke with Lee and convinced him to sell her the entire Jack the Ripper Stalks His Victims collection, which was made of ten pieces—or outfits. He was still a bit suspicious but he was living off of welfare checks at the time so he needed the money, in all likelihood a part of him didn’t want to sell these first precious pieces, so he overpriced them: 300 pounds each, roughly equivalent today in US terms to the value of $1,000—per outfit. She told him that was much higher than average for an as yet unknown designer, he said ‘take it or leave it’. She agreed.

And thus began their unlikely partnership.

The reason Isabelle Blow—or Issie as her friends knew her—agreed to this whopping sum was because she had slightly ulterior motives. She wasn’t just interested in a one-off purchase—goodbye-and-good luck transaction. Issie wanted to befriend Lee, she wanted to potentially take the young designer under her wing—if he would allow it. Her first job was convincing him she wasn’t as crazy as she looked.

Issie knew fashion, she knew the movers and shakers of the industry, she worked for British Vogue as an editor, she attended any premieres she wanted, schmoozed at parties with financial backers, she was even a colleague of Anna Wintour, the editor for Vogue in the US, all this to say—this is the type of person Lee would need on his side to pursue his dream. Someone who could be his champion and whisper his name into the ears of power in the industry.

And what would Issie get from such an arrangement? Well, quite simply, privileged access to the most incredible dresses and suits from the dark visionary mind of Lee Alexander McQueen. As we mentioned, Issie never failed to overdress for every occasion, she had an addiction to high fashion and she wore that addiction like a badge of honor. It’s clear that part of her dream was to discover a brilliant young designer, become his most beloved patron, wear his pieces to parties and galas, and hence, be on the bleeding edge of high fashion.

Lee’s initial wall of defense began to melt away in the coming weeks. As they talked and got to know each other, Lee saw that although Issie came off as some snobbish aristocrat, she was actually just-like-him in one key way: she was a beautiful weirdo. And the more her eccentricities came out, the more it endeared her to him. Outliers tend to gravitate toward one another, just think of Mark Twain hanging out with Nikola Tesla, or Leonor Fini and Salvador Dali.

After Issie and Lee had agreed on the sum of 300 pounds per outfit from his collection, Issie told Lee that she would have to pay him in installments because she was a ‘spendthrift’. So each week, Lee would meet Issie at an ATM in London and she would take out 100 pounds, and when a dress had been paid off, he would bring it in a black garbage bag for the hand off.

Issie told Lee that he should change his designer alias to Alexander McQueen, because it made her think of Alexander the Great, and it was a more evocative name for a designer. She started calling him Alexander, and following suit, when he was planning his next collection he took her advice.

Alexander McQueen’s first collection after Central St. Martins is called Taxi Driver. If one takes McQueen at his word, that all of his collections are autobiographical, then this one is an overt reference to his father. But according to Simon Ungless, fellow student of St. Martins, who continued to work with McQueen after they graduated, the inspiration for Taxi Driver came from the film by Martin Scorsese. Ungless recalls that McQueen thought De Niro looked (quote) ‘incredibly fuckable’ as Travis, the main character.

I personally don’t see why it can’t be both influences. We see this kind of confluence of factors time and again in the significant works of all creative geniuses. It’s one of the facets of a creative work that gives it rich emotional and intellectual layers of meaning to both the audience but also the creative while they’re obsessively working on it.

Next time you’re working on something creative which feels especially important and moves you in some way, ask yourself: What are the influences that make up this work’s architecture? Then make note of the personal, intellectual, and spiritual aspects. Sometimes these aspects have no direct relationship with one another to the outside observer, such as the film Taxi Driver and McQueen’s father, but to the creative, they are charged with meaning. When you do this, you’ll always notice a confluence of factors.

As McQueen begins working on the designs for what will officially be known as his first collection, Issie decides he needs a new place where he can focus his efforts. Since at this time he is still living with his parents. She gives him the keys to 33 Alderney Street, which is a tall Victorian house in the Central London neighborhood of Pimlico. It’s owned by the mother of Issie’s husband, Detmar. Issie also hires Alexander as her assistant at times to bring him along to photo shoots, show him the office, and give him some extra money.

The new living space launches Alexander into a creative high; he starts to gather together a list of people who may be available and interested to help him accomplish his next shows. Some of them, like Simon Ungless and Reva Mivasagar, are friends from St. Martins, while others he will meet coincidentally, like hairstylist, Mira Chai Hyde, who lives nearby.

McQueen’s Taxi Driver collection debuts in March 1993, at the Bluebird Garage on King’s Road, Chelsea. Isabella Blow singlehandedly drums up interest for the show, tapping all of her contacts and helping with the press. There are no contracts with clothing distributors, no production and sales goals setup, the goal at this stage is publicity—visibility. If they can get fashion journalists to start writing about McQueen then the rest will follow.

The Taxi Driver collection features aspects which will, in many ways, define McQueen’s work for years to come, including flawless tailoring, the use of bird feathers, a fusion of past and present, and the notorious bumster pants.

The bumster pants, or bumsters as they come to be called, are extremely low cut pants or jeans. You know those low rise jeans that are so common today? Those started because of Alexander McQueen’s bumsters. That idea didn’t exist before McQueen. But with the bumsters, the cut is so low cut that it exposes two areas which no designer before McQueen dared to expose: the mons pubis and the tailbone.

The mons pubis is the fleshy area just above the genitals, usually covered in pubic hair, and the tailbone is the base of the spine that connects into the space between your butt cheeks. You know—your butt crack.

Side note: I’ve included a picture of what McQueen’s bumsters look like on my site, at the companion gallery for this episode, you can find that at mjdorian.com/mcqueen, that’s mjdorian.com/mcqueen. I’ve also included plenty of pictures of Isabella Blow and Alexander McQueen there, definitely check it out. A link is also in the episode description.

It’s so very rare that a fashion designer comes along who can single handedly create a major innovation in clothing. But McQueen accomplishes it with his first official collection. A year later, in 1994, Madonna is wearing a pair of bumsters in an ad for MTV.

So what gave McQueen the idea to expose this area of one of fashion’s few taboos? He said later in an interview:

“I wanted to elongate the body, not just show the bum. To me, that part of the body—not so much the buttocks, but the bottom of the spine—that’s the most erotic part of anyone’s body, man or woman.”

The other aspect of dropping the pant line lower is that it dramatically affects the body’s silhouette. It elongates the torso while appearing to shorten the legs. This creates an unexpected visual effect, it come across in an aggressive way, it’s something the fashion world had never seen before. For the entire 20th century, the look was always to make the legs appear longer, making the body look more graceful. It was an aspect of clothing that was, in many ways, taken for granted as a rule.

In an overview written for the Taxi Driver collection, meant as a press preview of the designs, McQueen writes this:

“A collection designed solely around the female form and, by the use of proportion, accentuating parts of the woman’s anatomy to create a new shape. Hi-tech fabrics coincide with hi-tech visuals and combine with classics of bygone years such as fifties parallels, cut just above the ankle, and Korean line frock coats with Chesterfield collars, beaded with the scarlet pimpernel. No restriction pure contortion.”

This was not ‘fashion for the masses’, this was art. As Isabella Blow had said: “it was about sabotage and tradition.”

The fashion journalist, Sarah Mower, writes that McQueen’s Taxi Driver collection signaled the moment that British fashion started to ‘recover from a slump that began with the stock market crash of 1987.  The author, Dana Thomas, writes this in Gods and Kings: “Most fashion designers strive their entire career to come up with something “new” and never achieve it. McQueen did it in his first collection out of school.”

Ironically, as important of a collection as Taxi Driver turns out to be in the history of McQueen…it is the only one that is completely lost to time. Not a single piece from the collection survives. Why? We’ll have McQueen’s friend, colleague, and fellow St. Martins student, Simon Ungless explain that one:

“Nothing exists from that collection because, after the show, Lee and I put everything into black garbage bags, got into a taxi and on the way home decided to pop into the [sublimely named] Man Stink, a club in the basement of a pub in King’s Cross. We decided to leave the bags tucked behind garbage containers rather than pay the coat-check fee. We had a dance and some sherries, and when we came out, the bags were gone, collected by the garbage truck!”

This scene sounds ridiculous, but I have no doubt that it’s absolutely true, it’s easy to forget that at this point, in 1993, McQueen is only 24 years old. At his core he’s still the same club hopping and binge drinking college student from a few years ago.

The unique accessories from the Taxi Driver show faced similar fates, like a stunning headdress designed by Philip Treacy which was made of long pheasant feathers that gracefully climb up the model’s neck and face—it was ditched in the back of a cab.

Within a few days, the clothes from McQueen’s first public exhibition are getting pressed in a landfill somewhere, but it doesn’t matter—they achieved their intended purpose: to get Alexander McQueen into the press. He is already planning his next collection.

In the weeks that follow, Issie invites Alexander to her husband’s home at Hilles House in Gloucestershire. It’s a large English manor built by Detmar’s grandfather, celebrated architect, Detmar Jellings Blow. It sits on a private estate comprising 1,000 acres of carefully tended flower beds and stone walls. It’s exactly the kind of aristocratic mansion you would see appearing in shows like Downton Abbey, and the kind that Alexander has only ever seen used as a backdrop for photo shoots in fashion magazines. The manor, filled with antique tapestries, handmade furniture, and turn of the century paintings, serves as a romantic getaway from the grit of the city. In the following years, it will become a staple of Issie and Alexander’s friendship—she will invite him there up to six times a year. He’ll even take lessons in falconry there, further cementing his love for birds.

Alexander’s next collection is titled Nihilism. It is his Spring / Summer 1994 collection. For those of you unfamiliar with the fashion industry (like I was three months ago) fashion designers release their collections in seasons, but each ‘season’ in fashion is really two traditional seasons combined. So a designer will release a Spring / Summer collection and an Autumn / Winter collection. Both can comprise upwards of a hundred pieces which explore or innovate the established norms for those dual seasons. For example, one would expect to see minidresses in the Spring / Summer collection and parkas in the Autumn / Winter.

But one wouldn’t expect to see what McQueen did with his Nihilism collection for Spring / Summer 1994. The most notorious looks from the collection feature models tightly wound in saran wrap—with the transparent plastic splattered in red mud that drips across the subtle folds like blood, their nude flesh showing through. It’s a shocking image. But even here, you can see that the tightly wound saran wrap around one model is cut perfectly to resemble a sleeveless minidress.

You can see a photo of this look at the companion gallery I’ve put together for this episode, at mjdorian.com/mcqueen.

What is McQueen trying to say with these plastic wrap dresses? Certainly these aren’t part of a commercial clothing line. Is it a statement on the disposable nature of modern fashion? Is he saying the women are like used meat? Wrapped in plastic before being put in the freezer? Is he again tapping into the imagery of serial killers possibly wrapping a body in plastic to transport it? Or is he saying something philosophical about clothing itself? That even here, where the model is not even wearing fabric, but something as cheap as plastic wrap, we recognize it as a minidress because McQueen has cut it perfectly to resemble a minidress. I assume it’s all of these aspects influencing his concepts, after all, the collection is called Nihilism, so the expectation of darkness greets you right at the door.

Then there are women whose blouses look distressed, specifically around their breasts, and others whose tops are covered again in red mud, at times across the entire chest and other times just over the breasts on the fabric. The collection also sees the continued presence of the bumster.

These are bold and aggressive visuals. McQueen’s intention is art and provocation. And if he was looking to get a rise out of the journalists present, he succeeds.

The newspaper, The Independent titles their review of the show: McQueen’s Theatre of Cruelty. It states “McQueen, who is 24 and from London’s East End, has a view that speaks of battered women, of violent lives, of grinding daily existences offset by wild, drug-enhanced nocturnal dives into clubs where the dress code is semi-naked.” And calls the show “…a catalogue of horrors…tasteless innovation…the high price of originality.”

But as the old saying goes, there’s no such thing as bad press. Despite the controversy, dozens of calls come in from buyers interested in purchasing pieces from the show.

And this becomes the model for McQueen’s following shows—‘always give ‘em something to talk about’—it’s art & provocation. But it’s important to note that the intent isn’t to shock without substance, I don’t think that would have gotten him very far.

I’ve watched and examined all of McQueen’s fashion shows, and what always impresses me is that there is always some underlying vision being conveyed, even in the darkest corners of his work. The provocation is never superficial. This is what continues to differentiate him from even today’s designers, who may attempt some shocking or provocative elements. But when you place them side by side for a comparison with McQueen, you see the difference between contrived darkness and an authenticity rooted in darkness.

McQueen states this in an interview: “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.”

“I oscillate between life and death, happiness and sadness, good and evil…I’m about what goes through people’s minds, the stuff that people don’t want to admit or face up to. The shows are about what’s buried in people’s psyches…”

In June 1994, Alexander McQueen earns his first article in a fashion magazine. It debuts in Vogue—the magazine where Isabella Blow is an editor. Around this time, she also starts to arrange for McQueen’s pieces to appear in photoshoots for the magazine, with written credit beneath the published photo. All of this serves as visibility and validation for the Alexander McQueen persona.

Issie and Alexander grow closer, they attend fashion premieres together, and spend holidays at Hilles House throughout the year.

The two of them connected on many things, for one, they shared a bawdy sense of humor—it was dark, it was sexual, and often filled with a lot of c-words. Friends later describe their relationship as psychosexual. It has all the trappings of a relationship without physical sex.

The two of them also connect on their personal complexes—both of them are deeply self conscious about their physical appearance—a destructive complex to carry when you’re in the fashion industry.

The book, Blood Beneath the Skin states this about Issie:

“Like McQueen, she hated how she looked—she described her face as ‘ugly’—and felt self-conscious about her ‘bucked front teeth,’ which she called ‘her combine harvesters.’ Although she went to see a celebrity dentist in New York in the eighties to see if he could do anything about them she was told that she had left it too late. Her husband, Detmar said ‘Her habit of smearing her lips and teeth with lipstick was in part to deal with this perceived disfigurement…Her hatred of her face was another demon Issie carried with her for life.’”

When they’re staying at Hilles House, Issie often regales Alexander over tea with many stories about her colorful life, she’s ten years older than him, she had even known Andy Warhol and Basquiat when she was living in New York in the 80’s.

But the stories that draw McQueen’s attention the most are the dark ones. The ones with tragic ends and tangled hearts.

Detmar, Issie’s husband, shared a dark family secret with him: when he was 14, his father, Jonathan Blow, took his own life in 1977, by drinking a bottle of weed killer. The awful scene was witnessed by Detmar’s younger brother who told him ‘…Dadda never cried out, but his firsts were clenched in pain.’ Issie shared her own tales of family tragedy, revealing that her grandfather, after having been acquitted of murdering his second wife’s lover, took his own life by an overdose of morphine in a Liverpool hotel room.

But perhaps the familial wound that defined her personality most and which wove the shadows of Issie and Lee together was the tragedy that took her baby brother.

The book, Blood Beneath the Skin states:

“In 1964, when Issie was five years old, she was playing in the gardens of the family’s home, at Doddington Park, Cheshire, with her brother Johnny, who was two and a half. Her mother, Helen, told her daughter to look after her brother while she went into the house, but something distracted the little girl…and in those few seconds it seems that Johnyy, who was the heir to a baronetcy dating back to 1660, choked on a piece of dry biscuit and fell into a small pond and died.

Later, Isabella would claim that her mother had gone inside to put on her lipstick. ‘That explains my obsession with lipstick,’ she would say.”

What drew Issie and Lee together was something dark and hard to explain—they were damaged in complimentary ways.

McQueen stages another show for Autumn/Winter, 1994, he titles it Banshee. It is inspired by a mystical figure of Celtic folklore, a female spirit, who washes blood from the clothes of men about to die.

This is first time one of his shows is sponsored, in this case by Stella Dry and Dazed & Confused magazine. It’s a sign the publicity campaigns are working, the buzz is real. But the production is still working from a deficit, they can hardly make ends meet due to the high cost of staging such a show. He tells the Daily Telegraph “I can’t see myself going on for much longer like this with no backing, but I don’t know how to approach a big backer.”

Many of McQueen’s stylists and assistants are there only because they believe his vision, few are paid. But no one is forced, they are all there because they want to be part of this—a punk-rock spirit infuses the shows, and you can even see it in the attitude of the models, as they pound their way down the catwalk, in some shows they flip the bird to the audience in attendance.

McQueen even asks Issie to walk the catwalk in the show, wearing a purple button up shirt with a tall exaggerated collar, a look inspired by early 1800’s styles. She has the word ‘McQueen’ spray painted on the side of her hair.

McQueen sets his sights on crafting two major collections per year. After Banshee in 1994, there is The Birds, Spring/Summer, 1995, inspired by Alfred Hitchcock’s film of the same name. This is the first time we see the visual motif of geometric flying bird patterns included on McQueen’s fabrics. Later that year there is Highland Rape, Autumn/Winter, 1995, inspired by the dark tales of Scottish history. Then The Hunger, Spring/Summer, 1996, inspired by vampires and mortality. Later that year is Dante, Autumn/Winter, 1996, held in a cathedral it is partially inspired by Dante’s Divine Comedy. And finally Bellmer La Poupée, Spring/Summer, 1997, which references German artist, Hans Bellmer’s artworks with mechanical dolls.

With each of these collections, the buzz and press around McQueen grow, as does the demand to purchase the outfits, and the sponsorship opportunities for the shows themselves. This three year run from 1995 to 1997 forms an unheard of spectacle in fashion history, when one designer, still living off social security checks, manages to capture the world’s attention—and hold it.

The key to McQueen’s success is that English culture was in need of a British designer they could call their own: a working class boy who started as an underdog. Someone who they could both appreciate and discuss.

It was easy for British journalists and newspapers to cover McQueen, he did the hard part for them by provoking intense reactions to his shows. Half of each show displayed skillfully crafted clothing and the other half shocked and titillated. This is the hidden aim of his early shows—to drum up publicity—and McQueen with Issie’s press savvy plays the game masterfully.

Each of those five shows I mentioned is worth appreciating. And so I have included many photos and videos from those collections on the companion gallery for this episode, at mjdorian.com/mcqueen. But for the sake of our exploration, we will turn our attention to only two which capture something essential about McQueen’s genius and the exact time and place of their creation. Those are 1995’s Highland Rape and 1997’s Bellmer La Poupée.

We’ll begin with 1995’s Highland Rape. The book, Alexander McQueen, The Life and Legacy states:

“For the first time, McQueen showed in the British Fashion Council’s official tent outside the Natural History Museum in March during London Fashion Week. It was the hottest ticket of the week, and the crowd gathered outside was beyond capacity (Alice Smith remembers students trying to crawl underneath the bottom of the tent to get in). The invitation—a color photocopy of a man’s chest—had been serially reproduced and shared en masse. Inside, the runway was strewn with flowers and heather.”

The show opens with the commanding steps of a tall model with long fiery red hair wearing blackened eye contacts, which make her gaze appear fierce and otherworldly. She wears a flattering belly cut sweater, in muted green, which extends into billowing sleeves that fall a foot past her hands and sway as she walks. Her skintight green lace pants are tucked under the front of her high heels, obscuring her ankles and feet, making her proportions look alien.

The music which accompanies the show has a pulsing animalistic quality, punctuated by crashes of thunder. The following models continue the theme established by the first—red hair, muted green pieces—a long ornate skirt, with a pattern of bramble, a sleeveless white blouse, and a straight cut dress. But it is the fourth model which introduces something…unexpected…she walks onto the catwalk confidently with a silky gray suit jacket and a matching skirt, cut just above the ankle. But under her jacket she wears a torn green lace shirt, the rip exposes her naked left breast.

The fifth model looks as expected in a close fitting shirt and skirt combo, but the look of the sixth model tells us something is wrong here. The audience take a moment, the photojournalists stop taking photos, and just—look. She wears a delicate, full length, sleeveless green lace dress—which is completely in tatters. The left shoulder has been ripped off, and the hem is completely frayed, as if she just fought someone backstage. Add to that, the area of the dress at the level of her crotch has been torn open, revealing her purple panties.

The next two models look to be wearing well tailored business attire and evening wear, respectively. But soon, we again see a woman in tattered green lace, with a slash exposing her breast, or a violent rip across her crotch. And then a woman who stumbles across the stage as if drunk or recovering from a physical assault. What is happening here?

There will be 81 outfits in total presented at this show—I counted. Nearly half of them will in some way show destruction of the fabric implying violence. Why?

To Alexander McQueen, the reason is clear. His aim was to create a collection inspired by Scottish history, but not the overly romanticized Scottish history which has been whitewashed of its darkness, instead, the true history that represents struggles for independence, oppression, and violence committed against women.

McQueen later says in an interview: “I didn’t care what people thought of me, and I didn’t care what I thought of myself. So I would go to the far reaches of my dark side and pull these horrors out of my soul and put them on the catwalk.”

Highland Rape is a subject of personal heritage for McQueen, who grew up hearing stories from his mother, Joyce, about his distant ancestors on the Scottish side of his family tree. Stories of violent uprisings, betrayals, and the cruelties of war. This is what the title refers to, and in complete dedication to the theme he includes his own red McQueen tartan in many of the designs. At times he turns it into the pattern on a suit jacket, or a skirt, or a see-through blouse paired with tartan sleeves. But when it does appear, it carries with it an aura of strength, resilience, and defiance. It’s a fabric woven with pride.

Compare this to other designers of the 1990’s, who also use the Scottish tartan as inspiration in their own collections, most notably the British designer, Vivienne Westwood. In her collection from 1993, titled Anglomania, she creates her own colorful tartan which through the outfits becomes associated with playfulness and decadence. The models look like tartan cheerleaders—I’ve included the photos from that collection in the companion gallery for comparison. McQueen would have seen Vivienne Westwood’s work in 1993 and no doubt scoffed at it.

The press, following the Highland Rape collection, accused McQueen of being a misogynist. The reviews of the event caused an uproar, in the end, this brought the McQueen name even more into the mainstream. Scottish history was on everyone’s mind that year, in the following months, the films Braveheart and Rob Roy were released. His collection precluded the zeitgeist, rather than commenting on popular culture, he was drawing from personal influences.

He said this in an interview with the Sunday Times:

“They completely misunderstood Highland Rape. It wasn’t anti-woman. It was actually anti the fake history of Vivienne Westwood. She makes tartan lovely and romantic and tries to pretend that’s how it was. Well, eighteenth century Scotland was not about beautiful women drifting across the moors in swaths of unmanageable chiffon.”

March 1st, 1996, McQueen stages one of his most critically acclaimed collections to date, he calls it Dante, it’s partially inspired by Dante’s Divine Comedy. The venue is a derelict cathedral. He also acquires a significant backer who contributes 30,000 pounds to the production of the show. Sitting in the front row are his mother, Joyce, his friend and unofficial business advisor, Isabella Blow, and a full sized anatomical skeleton.

McQueen dedicates the Dante show to Isabella Blow.

Commenting on the spectacle afterward, journalists proclaim that he hit a ‘fashion moment’ with Dante. The International Herald Tribune wrote “[McQueen] proved that he is not just a fine tailor with a soaring imagination, but one of those rare designers who capture the spirit of the times.” The fashion writer for The Sunday Times, Colin McDowell, interviews McQueen. In a twist of serendipity, McDowell is the author of the first book on fashion which McQueen read when he was a teenager, titled McDowell’s Directory of Twentieth Century Fashion. Now McDowell writes an article about McQueen calling him “the most stimulating designer of the moment…his desire to sweep away the barriers of taste might be the kick-start that fashion needs as we approach the millennium.”

I’ve included imagery and the video from that show on the companion gallery for this episode. But as much positive critical reception that the Dante collection received, it’s McQueen’s next show which truly sanctifies him in fashion history.

Let’s turn our attention to McQueen’s 1997 Spring/Summer collection: Bellmer La Poupée.

The title and theme for the designs of this collection was inspired by the artwork of German artist, Hans Bellmer. Specifically his photography work in which he deconstructed dolls and rearranged body parts into new formations. The term, La Poupée, is French for The Doll. This was partially one of McQueen’s not-so-subtle digs at the vapid consumerism of the fashion industry, and the objectification of women’s bodies.

But in another more interesting sense, McQueen may have seen himself as Hans Bellmer, playing with dolls and dressing them for his artistic whims—though in this case, his dolls were supermodels like Debra Shaw and Kate Moss. And where Bellmer’s ‘strangest’ impulses were private, McQueen’s were a very public fetish.

With McQueen, there was the sense that with the newfound public attention, every show had to be bigger than the last show, every production had to increase the spectacle. For La Poupée, McQueen had a new vision, he had recently attended a modern art installation at Saatchi Gallery, in which the artist, Richard Wilson, specially constructed a room filled with reflective black oil. He approached his set designer friend, Simon Costin and asked ‘How can we do it?’

Simon and McQueen visited the planned venue for the show, the Horticultural Halls in Victoria—luckily the floor of the space was concrete, if it had been wood, the risk of water damage would have been too great to continue.

Simon built a ‘frame two feet high and 150 feet long with a black lining’ he said it was “as large as I could make it within the space and still get the audience in—the aim was to make it look like a black mirror.”

The book, Alexander McQueen: Blood Beneath the Skin describes the show:

“On September 27th, 1996, at the Horticultural Halls, the fashion world experienced a catwalk show that looked like an artwork in itself. The audience watched as the first model walked down a flight of stairs and onto the mirrored black surface; the realization that the girl was walking through water drew a collective gasp of surprise and delight from the crowd.

The models, including Kate Moss, Jodie Kidd, and Stella Tennant, wore Perspex wedge-heeled shoes and ‘they appeared, quite literally, to walk on water.’

The reference to water also held a more personal meaning for McQueen and his team. La Poupée was dedicated to David Mason, a close friend of Katy England’s, (McQueen’s in-house stylist for the shows since Highland Rape). Mason had committed suicide by filling his backpack full of bricks and throwing himself into the [River] Thames.

The theme of the transiency of life was expressed at the end of the show when a model staggered down the watery catwalk with a transparent geometrical structure enclosing her head and half her body; inside fluttered dozens of moths.

The most controversial aspect of the show, however, was McQueen’s decision to send a black model, Debra Shaw, down the catwalk wearing the shackle-like piece of body jewelry made by Shaun Leane. The audience went wild, but later the designer was accused of using the imagery of slavery to sell clothes, something he vehemently denied. He said ‘When Debra Shaw walked contorted in a frame that image had nothing to do with slavery. It was the idea of the body reconstructed like a doll-like puppet.’

However, the majority of the reviews were ecstatic. McQueen’s show was the highlight of London Fashion Week, wrote Iain R. Webb in The Times, stating ‘Exquisitely beaded Jazz Age fringed dresses looked remarkably sophisticated, as did clingy transparent dresses embroidered with cherry blossom and swirling Chinese dragons…Likewise his viciously tailored trouser suits in rose-pink brocade and icy-white matt sequins. However, McQueen could not resist a little anarchic fun, so he sliced them up with zip fasteners, or spray canned them with slashes of brightly colored paint.’ …

While The Independent said La Poupée was McQueen’s ‘most accomplished collection to date…Every pair of fine brocade trousers, each dusty pink catsuit, and every stitch of his bias-cut evening dresses, was masterful…This was a collection to leave no one in doubt that the designer could take on a couture house and breath fresh life into it.’

Sitting in the audience were representatives from LVMH, the French multinational luxury goods conglomerate that owned both Dior and Givenchy, figures who ‘could not have failed to be impressed’ by McQueen’s extraordinary vision.”

On the next Creative Codex:

Alexander McQueen is given the most lucrative offer of his life—to become the creative director of the French haute couture house, Givenchy. Should he take it for the biggest payday of his life and risk sacrificing the quality of his own brand?

We’ll also explore a controversial theory: did McQueen betray Isabella Blow?

And we’ll follow McQueen’s life to its tragic end—with the hopes of understanding him even in his darkest moments and appreciating the timeless nature of his genius.

All this and more on the next Creative Codex…