Alexander McQueen RIP

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1250249/Alexander-McQueen-kills-himself.html

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO. ;_;

Man that sucks! RIP, McQueen.

oh no, i can't. i'm so shocked. RIP.

Just three days ago on February 9, he was posting on Twitter wishing a friend Happy Birthday.

At 7.07am he wrote: "im here with my girl annie tinkerbell wishing kerry the slag ,happy birthday in NY ,your 40 now girl time to slow it down we think."

But just hours later at 12.40pm he seemed to have spiralled again into anxiety, writing: "HELLS ANGLES & PROLIFIC DEAMONS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

waaaaaau

Yeah that story just confirms: his mum died last week and he was very upset.

one of my favourite designers. :( :(

That story does not confirm anything about his mother!

Only that his friend also committed suicide, so that's why he did!

I'm assuming that the story will change before printing, and more details emerge.

Oops, I mean the DM story.

strange that the DM story goes into so much depth about Isabella although i'm sure he was deeply depressed after that.

anyway, that's all water under the bridge. he was AMAZING and this is tragic.

this was unexpected. woah.

:(

i cannot understand how someone with so much talent, influence, and work left in him could do this. but those worldly things are not what this is about, i guess.

Suicide is not a rational thing and his mum died last week, which is the trigger I think. The Izzy stuff was padding to cover over DM having three lines of info, really. I loved them both; offices I work in are in tears. Sun story has his Twitter feed where he discussed her death, gone now but here's the cached w/last entry from 9/2:

im here with my girl annie tinkerbell wishing kerry the slag ,happy birthday in NY ,your 40 now girl time to slow it down we think.
about 5 hours ago from web
HELLS ANGLES & PROLIFIC DEAMONS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
12:40 PM Feb 7th from web
sunday evening been a fucking awful week but my friends have been great but now i have to some how pull myself together and finish with the
12:38 PM Feb 7th from web
La reine Margot
2:21 PM Feb 3rd from web
but life must go on!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
11:47 AM Feb 3rd from web
i'm letting my followers know the my mother passed away yesterday if it she had not me nor would you RIP mumxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
11:46 AM Feb 3rd from web

So, the happy birthday was the last message, and the Hells Angles came immediately after the "finish with the" message?

Like this

mm, as I say.

So, nothing on that twitter feed to suggest anything at all.

"Hells Angels and Prolific Demons" appears much lower down as well, predating his mother's death.

Still, all media tales have to have a Twitter angle nowadays.

Hell's Angels and Prolific Daemons is the name of the collection he will have been working on for Paris.

Well, that was my guess...

It seems The Sun has misread the dates on the messages.

He was a genius, and hacks like Tom Ford will probably live to be 100.

wow this is so sad. what elmo said about all the work left in him.

i'm no clothes horse but this is really, really sad

his influence extended deeply into the market and widely across the world and his death leaves a huge void. this is all a bit difficult for me to fathom right now tbh.

So sad. I hadn't known he started at G&H.

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3262/2771535180_7839856b44.jpg

I'm a bad fag, cuz I never heard of this guy.

About 15 years ago, Edgy Style Mag shared an office with a certain London listings title and we'd go to the top floor to smoke, have angst, and read the paper. I was having a particularly trying day at work and decided there was nothing for it but a trip upstairs. When I arrived, the fashion department were having a fag break/meeting and they beckoned me over to where they were sitting, because they wanted me to meet this guy Lee who'd come in for a meeting. He wore a ratty old grey sweatshirt and a bemused expression layered over a boxer's face, and made me laugh on a shitty day. I never got to know him better than that, but I knew he was going to be special. A year later, he became the guy we're all mourning today.

Really, really hate people who pretend that fashion doesn't matter and they're oh-so-above-it-all at the best of times, but for me, right now, it does. RIP.

His cover for Homogenic alone qualifies him for deification by the Queen.

What the hell!!

He was so awesome.

priorities and all that but wtf is up with enough people on Twitter writing "McQeen" for it to trend?

RT @VictoriaCoren: God, what terrible news about Alexander McQueen. We can only hope he's missed the deadline for Jan Moir's Friday column.

he had a rep with interns for being a total sadist tho

This is so sad. A really likeable guy in an industry not bursting with really likeable guys. RIP Alexander.

First news I heard when I woke up this morning and I can't stop shaking and tearing up. He inspired so many...I'm just stunned.

The only thing I've seen of his in person was a hilariously ugly suit that had a tendril of smoke coming up one leg and across the jacket.

what happens to his label now, i wonder. it's hard to imagine anybody stepping in for him. (i know this isn't unprecedented circumstance but it's not like there is a Donatella to his Gianni, to make a strained analogy)

I'll be in the office tomorrow - someone will have an idea and I'll be happy to report back.

One thing: McQueen's creative director is Katy England, who is married to BBY GLLSP and did the Kate Moss line for Topshop. I don't know if someone who is more a stylist than a designer is best in the role, though - and of course it could be too soon to say.

I think he is irreplaceable. But then I really don't care too much about the business end, and think most design houses should be shuttered when the designer dies. Versace is a good example, I don't care for Donatella's designs at all.

very sad, and very shocking

at least he went out on a high, like his last collection was kindof all-time classic anyway...?

Christian Dior was irreplaceable, too - but they replaced him with an unknown called Yves Saint Laurent. We'll see.

After a bit of a hunt, I found a load of great pictures of his 94-96 collections.
http://forums.thefashionspot.com/f116/1994-1996-alexander-mcqueen-retrospective-53680.html

90s hot

xxpost That's funny in a sad kind of way. I wanted to say "everyone is replaceable" but you worded it much better.

Anyway, RIP. I was not the biggest fan but it's sad to see geniuses (or rather just people) go. Especially this way.

oh shit. was out most of the day and only just realised. rip :(

http://blogs.wsj.com/runway/2010/02/11/former-intern-christian-siriano-on-mcqueens-death/

Oh, right, read news links before posting them. That one ^ is pretty content-free.

“I found his work very interesting and never banal. There was always some attraction to death, his designs were sometimes dehumanized. Who knows, perhaps after flirting with death too often, death attracts you.” - Karl Lagerfeld

this strikes me as extremely tasteless. fuck this dude.

Karl Lagerfeld is pretty lacking in taste imo.

really? kindof an awesome quote imo

glib, reductive, callous, dumb.

karl lagerfeld is an asshole.

not worth getting offended by karl at this point

eh, true. i will try to remember that lagerfeld is essentially momus.

just to steal lagerfeld's glibness, i always assume whenever he says something horrible that it's because he's been hungry for ten years

Elmo, just NO.

Horseshoe knows how to play this one. It's not just disgusting, it's also wrong. Karl Lagerfeld...how can I put this? Dude is so insistent on being treated like some sort of special child, nobody around him ever tells him he's gone too far because of the inelegant/comprehensive way he shoots the messenger (think what would happen if a stylist cussed out Anna Wintour and x10). I would love it if for once in his life, he actually had to apologize for being insensitive.

Today I met a stylist friend who knew Lee better than I did (not saying much yo) and he pointed out that the funeral of his mother was/is TODAY. In addition to losing Issy Blow and his mum, his Aunt Dolly also died recently - all three were very important to his work. I was wondering if he'd been on antidepressants - a dangerous but not uncommon side effect of some of them is that suicidal ideations have been known to come on suddenly with a new prescription.

sorry suzy, that was tacky of me. i apologize.

Understood, Elmo. In the past year there have been far too many suicides by people I know from work, who I never thought would go there. Shawn Mortenson was the last one; what galls me is when editors I've known go all post-Diana over a famous colleague but if the same fate befalls someone else, BFD and what a loser. Although I only met McQueen once, I did know Issy Blow and her widower is a friend of mine. Her death struck me harder - she's someone I had a lot of sympathy for because she made introductions like an agent would, deserved a better career etc but got paid in dresses rather than jobs/money. She was also treated like shit by her father.

Best new zing for ex-fatty misanthropists like Lagerfeld, from board-flat me: 'you know more about walking around with your own pair of tits than I ever will.'

i admit that if anything were to make me kill myself, it's my mum dying.

lagerfeld seems like barely a human being at this point.

He's always struck me as rather cylon-esque tbh.

Except if he were a robot, he would have a prettier design.

xposts

in addition to those things he had a show to deliver in a week or so, is that correct? i suspect that he was behind on finishing those to his satisfaction, quite understandably considering those recent deaths and hope that he didn't get overwhelmed by the pressure of delivering those to his own high standards. whether he knew it or not, he could have just not delivered the catwalk show, no? the industry would have understood, surely, that he couldn't do it right after his mother died. i mean, i know that there's a load of money riding on shows but this stuff happens irl and financiers have to deal with it. not that there are good or bad reasons for him doing what he did (perish the thought) but i really hope that work wasn't the last straw because these things are surmountable.

anyway, i have been thinking a lot about him since yesterday. RIP.

Lagerfeld's a total fucking homunculus TBH. Former colleague is creative director for one of the brands he works on and I do not know how she does it.

Jed, there were (and are) a lot of features/covers coming down the pike for March because show in question marked, for him, 20 years in the fashion industry. That drum was being beaten very comprehensively, not least by McQueen himself. A lot of people get manic or anxious before their shows because of NO SLEEP. Nobody quite knows what's going on with Paris yet but I bet they pulled McQ at Bryant Park because it was all ready to go and there are a couple of holes in the Paris plan. Fashion people have a 'show must go on' mentality and will not want everyone's 18 hour days/the last 6 months to go to waste.

yes, he must have been completely overwhelmed with everything that happened and everything that was scheduled to happen in the next month. i know very little about what he was like irl but the man that committed suicide doesn't seem like the man who has been working his heart out for 20 years. such pressure, damn it.

and p.s. todays "article" in the telegraph reveals toby young as the sub-human he is.

Oh great, some other douche I used to work for.

a lot of my students have been posting RIPs on facebook to this guy. had never heard of him til now, had no idea he was so popular.

The more I read here (and in articles), the sadder I find this. To be so desperate that death seems the only option is just so so so sad. Losing your mum must be devestating (if you have a close bond with her of course). RIP Lee.

There is nothing so inspirational for a large number of people as someone who comes from a working-class background and fierces their way to the top of an industry obsessed with the idea of its aristocracy and ultraconfomity (by which I mean the ability to identify a prevailing aesthetic before others in the same field). For that reason - and his evident talent - McQueen's career is really significant for people who are 10-15 years younger than me, who are 'creative' - discussing this yesterday with my stylist friend who is 25, I told him that back in the day people arrived in London wanting to be pop stars or artists, and now the arrivistes want to be designers or stylists (and photography aspirants will always be with us). We didn't go so far as to say he was Kurt Cobain for fashion students but I've seen that observation in blog comments.

Maybe I am too sensitive, but am I the only one who is troubled at the overuse of "kills him / herself" in the headlines whenever there is a suicide. It seems callous and sensationalizing.

had never heard of him til now, had no idea he was so popular.

You, Alfred and I are all in the same boat! When Alba started the thread I admit my first thought was 'I wonder who he is.'

Hmm. Maybe using words like 'casualties' or 'suicide' in headlines is a buffer zone for little kids who know the Anglo-Saxon short word for many different dangerous things yet do not need to know, just yet, the finer Latin-root points of how people destroy themselves and others. For example, the word 'rape' never featured on evening news when I was a kid, but if you stayed up for late news, rape was used as the term rather than 'a woman was assaulted'.

I suspect it also might have something to do with the fact that 'kills self' is shorter and easier to fit to page layout than 'commits suicide'.

(by which I mean the ability to identify a prevailing aesthetic before others in the same field)

this seems very OTM not just for the fashion industry but for life in general.

truth be told, i think the best i can hope for out of this is a good mcqueen biography in a couple years. not trying to be macabre, but i really would like to read a comprehensive (and reasonably objective) account of his life and work. though i suspect we'll get a few pulpy remembrances before that happens...

Inquest told he hanged himself IN HIS WARDROBE. And left beaucoup de notes.

Toby Young has shown his enormous sensitivity by taking the word "twat" out of his article I notice. This means he can now moan about how he was "flamed" by people on twitter for merely suggesting that McQueen was not a genius. Way to make a living.

toby young is so so so much further from genius than normal mortals, i couldn't believe he'd written that.

Lee Alexander McQueen

dear lee

i can´t stop thinking how both fierce and feeble you are

it is difficult to grasp this

my condolences go out to your family and friends and all your team

who must be all trying to fathom this

i would like to thank you for all your inspiration

it was so important to me to get to work with you and your team

a real mashup of fertile minds

it was vital to my development

i´m grateful

and all the warmth all around you and your mom

björk

http://unit.bjork.com/mcq/

saw this first on hipster runoff and i kinda think that is by carles?

what is carles?

10 years ago. Very vivid in my head. RIP McQueen.

poor boy :(

fucking genius

Yep.

Yeah. I remember crying over this at work, it was terrible. Still love looking at his old work even now.