Alexander McQueen: London’s fashion groundbreaker

Alexander McQueen was a singular force in fashion. His collections were full of daringly original garments, which could be both rooted in tradition and totally severed from fashion conventions.

His creativity pushed beyond the bodily limits of clothing. He dressed models in corsets made of glass and aluminium coils, and took ‘low ride’ trousers down way below the hip.

McQueen grew up in working-class Stratford, in Newham. He mastered his craft in the workrooms of Savile Row and studio spaces on Hoxton Square. London is sewn right through McQueen’s garments, giving us a way to understand the city’s history, his heritage and how the two entangle.

McQueen was one of the leading fashion designers of the late 20th and early 21st century. He created 36 collections for his label, called Alexander McQueen, during his lifetime. From 1996 to 2001, he also designed for French luxury fashion house Givenchy. Many of his garments explored themes like sex, death, romanticism and history.

McQueen’s exceptional ability to create clothes that looked like works of art earned him huge success in the 1990s and 2000s. He won British Designer of the Year four times and was awarded Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE), a prestigious title given by the monarchy, in 2003.

McQueen died by suicide in 2010. His longtime collaborator Sarah Burton took over as creative director of his label after his death.

McQueen’s fashion foundations were laid in Savile Row in Mayfair, the historic home of British high-end tailoring.

He left school at 16 to do a tailoring course at Newham College, working at his uncle’s pub on the side. Then he bagged himself two apprenticeships with tailors on the Row: first at Anderson & Sheppard, later at Gieves & Hawkes.

McQueen quickly picked up traditional tailoring techniques and pattern cutting, working a lot with historical and military clothing. Trained to cut cloth with speedy precision, he could create a garment seemingly out of thin air.

Savile Row gave him a grounding in fashion history – which he could later turn on its head. “Everything I do is based on tailoring,” he once said.

After a few years on Savile Row, McQueen spent a short time working on coats and waistcoats at London costumier Bermans & Nathans, which included making costumes for a production of Les Misérables.

Aged 20, he worked as a pattern cutter for experimental designer Koji Tatsuno. He also worked on the fetishistic leather bondage collection for Ladbroke Grove-based fashion label Red or Dead.

In 1990, McQueen applied for a job at Central Saint Martins, London’s famous arts college, as a pattern-cutting tutor. Instead, the head of the masters course encouraged him to enrol as a student on the MA fashion course.

McQueen’s 1992 degree collection was called Jack the Ripper Stalks His Victims. It was inspired by the five women murdered in Whitechapel in 1888 by an unknown serial killer named Jack the Ripper.

While police and journalists at the time labelled the victims ‘prostitutes’, only one, Mary Jane Kelly, was known to have worked in the sex trade. Still, this misinformation has followed the victims for over 100 years. The degree show notes described it as a “day into eveningwear collection inspired by 19th century street walkers”.

Putting his skilful cutting learned on the Row to good use, a number of McQueen’s garments drew on Victorian silhouettes, like corsets, bustles and frock coats.

He also stitched a lock of his hair into the linings of several items. Back in the 1800s, hair was exchanged between lovers and friends, or kept to mourn dead relatives, like the hairwork in this mourning bracelet in our collection.

McQueen launched his label in 1992, the same year he graduated. In 1993, he moved into a design studio in Hoxton Square, Shoreditch, where he worked on his collections with local creatives such as blacksmiths, glassblowers and welders.

“Everyone worked together at the beginning of the nineties,” he told Purple magazine. “We were all working for nothing because we needed to do it. Otherwise, there would be nothing in London.”

The area was on the cusp of gentrification. Artists had been moving into this largely deprived part of east London since the late 1980s, making the most of cheap rent and empty warehouse spaces.

In 1993, Young British Artists Tracey Emin and Sarah Lucas set up their studio-come-shop The Shop on nearby Bethnal Green Road. The Blue Note opened on Hoxton Square the same year. The nightclub hosted trailblazing nights by drum and bass label Metalheadz and dub pioneer Aba Shanti, which started drawing adventurous clubbers east.

Mcqueen’s early years at Hoxton Square were hard graft. He worked on tight budgets, often with little money left over for himself. The London fashion scene wasn’t paying attention to the artistry and skill of his tailoring. “London gives me fuck all,” he said in 1993.

His breakthrough came in 1995 with his autumn/winter collection, Highland Rape. In 1996, McQueen won his first British Designer of the Year Award and became the chief designer of womenswear at Givenchy.

Vanity Fair interviewed him in Hoxton Square in the wake of this newfound fame. The magazine’s March 1997 issue, ‘London! Swings! Again!’, featured a gushing 25-page spread of the new names of “the Coolest City on Earth”.

McQueen is framed by the article, a little dismissively, as one of London’s new “provocateurs”. Formerly the “enfant terrible of London fashion,” he was now “the courtier to ladies who lunch and Argentinians with means… Not bad for the son of an East End cabbie!”

McQueen’s influences were numerous: Victoriana, the Gothic, film, photography, taxidermy, to name a few. His family history, which stretched from the East End to Scotland, also strongly shaped his vision. “My work is biographical,” he said in an interview with SHOWstudio, “so anything I experience, I digest and then vomit back into society.”

He was inspired by his mum’s work on her own family history, which was rooted in the East End. His research into Jack the Ripper for his degree show was sparked by her discovery that one of the victims stayed in their relative’s inn.

McQueen also learned from his mum that he descended from Huguenot refugees who moved to Spitalfields in the 1680s. In 1996, honouring this heritage, he presented his autumn/winter collection in the dramatic Georgian architecture of Christ Church Spitalfields.

This wool and cashmere suit from 2003 is part of our collection. It points to another aspect of living East End history: pearly kings and queens. McQueen sewed mother-of-pearl buttons onto the hip of the trousers, just as London’s charitable cockney royalty have covered their clothes in buttons since the late 1800s.