[Deathwatch] Alexander McQueen, fashion designer, 40

[Notification of departing celebrities]

*Alexander McQueen, fashion designer, dies at 40*


Thursday, February 11, 2010

The death of designer Alexander McQueen strikes at the fashion 
industry's creative core, not because he had the most lucrative business 
or because he launched the greatest number of trends that trickled down 
to suburban malls. Instead, McQueen represented the kind of volatile 
imagination that transforms clothes into a cultural tapestry, intensely 
personal therapy and political provocation.

The British designer, who was found dead Thursday in his London home, 
was 40 years old. The death was an apparent suicide. It had been a long 
time since he'd been considered an enfant terrible. But he, more than 
any of the 20-something designers working today (who like to consider 
/themselves/ subversive), was able to use fashion as a tool for 
agitating folks out of their preconceived notions about femininity, 
power and even romance. Over the course of a career that lasted more 
than 15 years, he tackled the social impact of body-cloaking chadors, 
the stigma of disability, the role of technology in dehumanizing our 
lives, the historical subjugation of women and even the way in which 
modern women sometimes allow themselves to be victims -- sometimes of 
society and sometimes of fashion.

McQueen was able to back up his flamboyance, his audacity and his 
sometimes irascible personality with the impeccable tailoring that he 
learned during his early apprenticeship on Britain's Savile Row. McQueen 
was not merely flash and petulance. He was substance, too.

His career took him from Savile Row to the corporate boardrooms of LVMH 
Moët Hennessey Louis Vuitton, where he served as creative director of 
Givenchy. But in 2000, he defected from the French firm and joined Gucci 
Group, which bought a controlling interest in his signature label. 
McQueen retained creative control and under the guidance of Gucci 
Group's chairman Domenico de Sole, he seemed to flourish.

McQueen's death comes just as designers in New York have begun unveiling 
their fall 2010 collections. McQueen was scheduled to show his line in 
Paris in March.


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