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"  About one month before Alexander McQueen took his life, on February 11 at age 40, I received a call from one of his close friends asking me if I had DVDs of seasons one and two of True Blood. &amp;quot;Lee&amp;#039;s obsessed!&amp;quot; the friend said. &amp;quot;Desperate!&amp;quot; McQueen (known as Lee to friends and family) took his obsessions to such extremes that few people could possibly appreciate this urgency. I vowed to have the show in his hands within 48 hours. What ensued was a hijinks-filled, not necessarily kosher acquisition that only someone with Lee&amp;#039;s childish delight and irreverence could relish. Deadlines were pushed aside. Calls made. E-mails sent. Interns dispatched. I&amp;#039;d be damned if I&amp;#039;d fail to deliver. Inspiration strikes in a myriad of shapes: What if his fall 2010 collection ended up being all about vampire vixens? I was not about to let bureaucracy stand in the way of what might be McQueen&amp;#039;s latest fancy.  McQueen had certainly been inspired by the screen before. There was the 1994 show at Bagleys Warehouse, where Hitchcock had filmed scenes for The Birds, at which models clad in orange dresses crisscrossed with tire tracks complained about the uncomfortable white contact lenses he had them wear. Then there was the spring 2004 collection, in which his not-so-wholesome take on farmers&amp;#039; plaids, denims, and &amp;#039;30s bias-cut dresses was based on the Depression-era dance-hall film They Shoot Horses, Don&amp;#039;t They? I met McQueen at the beginning of both our careers. While in graduate school for journalism, I was working as a production assistant on fashion shows and happened to be enlisted to help with his first U.S. presentation, the &amp;quot;Dante&amp;quot; collection of autumn/winter &amp;#039;96. By then, McQueen was already famous for making clothes that everyone desired but that never got produced. Eccentric and influential stylist Isabella Blow had bought his entire Central Saint Martins graduate collection; his &amp;quot;bumster&amp;quot; pants (so low-rise as to be literally cheeky) had caused a worldwide sensation.  Rumor had it McQueen was thumbing his nose at the industry and refusing to do business with what critics described as his often-brutal and macabre ideas. But he was destined to be a huge influence on fashion, and I considered myself lucky to be in the right place at the right time to work with him. &amp;quot;Dante&amp;quot; was a meditation on death, with Gothic, wing-shaped lapels and crucifix-adorned masks. My job was to wrap a model in cellophane and tie her up in twine to serve as a centerpiece. I was older than McQueen (and everyone else in the room, for that matter) and typically never felt like one of the cool kids. I tended not to approach hipster designers uninvited\u2014especially this one, who stood in the corner of a raw space on West Broadway with a cockney accent and a missing tooth, sporting a sleeveless flannel shirt. I can&amp;#039;t remember what it was, but suddenly McQueen was struck with giggles at something I said. I realized I had him all wrong. He was really shy, unassuming\u2014standing in the corner waiting for someone to talk to him.   Now, if I can make someone laugh, I have a tendency to latch on and go for broke. When McQueen ventured out to the fire escape for a smoke, I followed him and kept trying to crack him up. I can be particularly crude when encouraged, and McQueen&amp;#039;s silly grin and stoner giggles egged me on as we drank borrowed beer and passed cigarettes back and forth, like kids waiting to get caught. It was a silly, minor moment. But Lee was an artist capable of bonding deeply, and\u2014despite the rush of stars and glamorous people who flocked to him as he became famous\u2014whenever we saw each other after that, we just started laughing all over again. He never forgot or pretended not to remember. People called him an enfant terrible, but he was really a genius with the heart of a teenager. McQueen had a marksman&amp;#039;s eye for silhouette. He saw beauty not only in the mundane but also the sinister, and gave it life in often complicated and baffling construction. His &amp;quot;Shipwrecked&amp;quot; sirens from spring &amp;#039;03 and hologram of Kate Moss in &amp;#039;06\u2014floating eerily in a sheer white dressing gown\u2014were sartorial sonatas that treated death with grace and beauty, yes, but not without decay. He examined themes of insanity, rape, death, and transformation, and wasn&amp;#039;t afraid to take on evolution and the future of the environment or of the human race, as he did with his spring 2010 collection, &amp;quot;Plato&amp;#039;s Atlantis,&amp;quot; in which women evolved into sea creatures. But he was also a master tailor who had been trained on Savile Row, first at Anderson &amp;amp;amp; Sheppard, then Gieves &amp;amp;amp; Hawkes (followed by a stint at Romeo Gigli), and, time and again, he would return to his love of suiting. Whether strict or elaborate, be the models human chessboard pieces or Elizabethan witches, there was never a question of skill or talent for this son of a taxi driver who quit high school at 16 to pursue his dream. He will be remembered both for his distinctly British irreverence and his ability to create museum-worthy clothes that reflected the dualities of a complex and often darkly romantic beauty.  McQueen was also self-destructive (like so many creative types who give themselves over completely to what they love). There were drugs and booze and daylong benders. He was given to emotional extremes and loved drama. He went to fantastic lengths to realize his oddly clad creatures who were as vulnerable and raw as himself.  But the spirit of his message never failed to awe and delight. His zoo-inspired &amp;quot;Natural Distinction&amp;quot; collection for spring/summer 2009 may have earned a lukewarm response from critics, but an entire industry was charmed when he hopped onto the runway to take his bow in a bunny costume. It&amp;#039;s no wonder he was championed by Bj\u00F6rk, Kate Moss, milliner Philip Treacy, and, most recently, Lady Gaga (who wore his hooflike &amp;quot;armadillo&amp;quot; shoes in her &amp;quot;Bad Romance&amp;quot; video). Naysayers be damned, he forged deep alliances with kindred spirits\u2014that&amp;#039;s what he really cared about.  Friends I spoke with said McQueen was devastated by the sorrow he felt after his mother&amp;#039;s death on February 2. Lee, apparently, had been through much in the following days, even tweeting about his despair while trying to finish his fall 2010 collection. Until she fell ill, McQueen&amp;#039;s mother, Joyce, had long been his biggest supporter. From the early days, she was always backstage, usually serving beans on toast to models who didn&amp;#039;t eat. She would leave and come back later with coronation chicken and tuna salad sandwiches for lunch. When McQueen took over at Givenchy from 1996 to 2001, he riled the French by calling Hubert de Givenchy&amp;#039;s designs &amp;quot;irrelevant,&amp;quot; but he used his money to buy his mother a house. When he sold his own company to Gucci Group in 2000, while still employed by LVMH (owner of Givenchy), many insiders considered the move a slap in the face of his employer. But as irreverent and wickedly impulsive as he could be, he never stopped loving his mother\u2014or fashion. We are all left with a profound sadness at the passing of Alexander McQueen. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.elle.com/fashion/a10959/angels-demons-alexander-mcqueen-435631/>