Original subtitles

[dramatic music playing]

[static]

-[TV] Hussy all right? -[dog barks]

-[McQueen] Sminky Pinky. -[dog whines]

Meats.

No.

-[woman] You mean like a-- -Maids.

[woman] Maids? All right.

[TV] Special cleansers remove sticky marks with less smearing...

...pick up more dust.

That's it. No problem...

[TV] ...and some polishes can smear...

[static]

There's lots of people in the industry who say,

"I discovered Alexander McQueen."

But you don't discover talent. Talent's there.

You open doors for talent, you push it through,

or you help it along.

No one discovered Alexander McQueen.

Alexander McQueen discovered himself.

Lee had this very strange CV.

I wasn't very good at school.

I was always drawing clothes in every lesson...

in science, in biology, and...

But I used to enjoy art most.

[woman] When he left school, he wasn't sure what he wanted to do.

He was out of work, looking for work, I should say,

because my husband's very strict

on the children going out to work.

Lee was watching a television program one evening,

and they was saying that they couldn't get apprentices

to work in Savile Row,

so I just said to him, "Why don't you go and try?"

Said, "You just knock on the door."

They can only either say yes or no, you know."

And that's exactly what he done.

[man] Anderson and Sheppard started in 1906.

We liked to do things slightly different to other people.

We have our house style, and that's what we're gonna teach the apprentices to make.

[McQueen] I was taught by a master tailor from County Cork in Ireland.

[Hitchcock] He was the best tailor we had working on the premises.

The first year, you start off padding collars, putting in pockets...

but you're expected to make a full jacket ready for fitting

by the end of the first year.

As soon as you put it on,

it should fit like a glove,

and you know it's made for you.

[McQueen] I knew I couldn't survive in a place like that

for the rest of my life, cluttered in a small workshop,

sitting on a bench padding lapels.

But I did have a passion, and I was good at it.

I was good at tailoring a jacket.

I was quick at learning

and quick at learning trousers.

I wanted to learn everything.

Give me everything.

[man] It was beginning of '90s

when I had a bespoke tailoring shop in Mount Street,

and he just walked in one day.

He looked like skinheads,

but just told me he can cut frock coat

much better than 50-years-old tailor I had.

So I was very curious and just told him,

"Okay. Show me what you can do."

I never really made clothes in a traditional way.

I was experimenting myself

in how to create structure and volumes.

I began to just take in material, any material,

and by putting them all together,

somehow you can start to create three-dimensional form.

Lee wanted to understand

why I'm doing this way or that way.

[woman] When Lee was 17, he said,

"I'll make you a couple of skirts,"

and I've got to say, they fit like a glove.

They were so fitted to my body.

I couldn't even move my legs hardly,

but I used to get compliments on this skirt.

I did used to wonder,

"I hope he finds the right thing for himself in life."

[man] He was a sweet boy from the East End looking to make money.

We needed technical help. Machinists. We needed pattern cutters.

We needed people who had hands-on experience

in making clothes.

Gave me no attitude. Was never late.

Always knew what he was doing. Always delivered.

He listened continually to Sinead O'Connor,

which was quite odd, because no one else liked Sinead O'Connor at the time.

He really liked her, for some reason.

I always remember him with his Walkman on,

listening to Sinead O'Connor.

[NASA archive] Three, two, one. Ignition.

Liftoff.

[McKitterick] Red or Dead was this very young street-wear company.

When I said to him that the Space Baby collection...

was based on the anniversary

of the men landing on the moon, he was like, "What?"

He didn't know you could take a subject that

had no relation to clothing

and actually get inspiration from that to design clothing.

So he didn't understand this idea of visual research

or historic references or sexual references.

-[NASA 1] We copy you on the ground. -[NASA 2] The eagle has landed.

He must have asked me questions.

"What can I do next? How can I push myself forward?"

And at the time,

all the designers in Italy were opening diffusion lines.

He went to Italy with no language,

no place to stay, no money, no qualifications.

I thought within a week, he'll be back, you know,

with his tail between his legs.

A week later, maybe ten days, I get a call from Lee from Italy.

He'd landed a job as an assistant for Romeo Gigli.

To say I was shocked was an understatement. [laughs]

[Gigli] I say, "Okay, I'm looking for new jacket.

I have my mind this shape,

but my tailor, they cannot read that shape.

Maybe you can help me to do it."

And we start to do that jacket, and we did the first fitting.

I say, "No, it's wrong.

That is not what I'm looking for."

So with the tailor, with Lee, they did one more.

We did the second fitting,

and again, I take out the lining,

looking inside the jacket, and it was wrong.

Third fitting, I say, "No, is incorrect."

And I take out the lining, and inside the jacket,

they wrote with a black pen, "Fuck you, Romeo."

[laughing]

That was the time when I was looking for new shapes--

for shapes, for shapes...

and he was looking so deeply and hard.

He was really deeply looking to understand everything.

He was leaving my studio

because he want to study more and more and more.

[woman] You can't teach talent, but what you can do

is make them better at what they do or more professional.

And to me, the whole thinking behind this MA

was to make them work in teams,

working together as you do in the fashion world.

I saw this unprepossessing, I must say...

very shabby, very unattractive--

I hate to be... say this,

but it was true... boy

with a bundle of clothes over his arm

outside my office.

I said to him, "Who are you looking for?"

And he said, "I've come to see you."

But I had no job, which he said he was after.

The whole thing intrigued me. He was passionate.

And to me, this is the secret, really,

if you tap into that.

I found myself saying,

"I think you should come on my course,"

and I couldn't offer him money, that was really sad,

and it was patently obvious he had none.

Aunt Renee said she had money in the bank sitting there,

not doing anything, and she would rather help Lee.

She'd worked in the rag trade. She knew that Lee had talent.

And he came back and said,

"My aunt is going to pay the fees,

and I'm coming."

[McQueen] Saint Martins was the place to go,

but what I liked about it was the freedom of expression

and the being surrounded by like-minded people.

I think we got on really well because we had the same sense of humor.

And he laughed all the time,

so he was just funny and disrespectful,

and he'd do catwalk shows down the corridor.

He'd just muck around.

Whenever he could muck around, he'd muck around.

I was actually teaching there at the time as well,

and he was not frightened to tell people,

"I know better than you," even the tutors.

He was a bit of a nightmare student because he knew so much.

I'm sure he was a pain and did interrupt people.

He didn't actually dare interrupt me.

But he used it. He used it as I intended him to use it,

and he'd come to a painting or a book,

and, you know, not having had a formal education,

it was all new to him.

And that was it.

He reinterpreted things in his way.

It wasn't filtered through, with a lot of us

who had more conventional backgrounds.

I loved that.

He knew where to go for everything.

London was his town.

"And where do I get my button holes?"

He'd go, "You want to go to Marten in Soho.

If you want fabric, then you want to go to Berwick Street, Shepherd's Bush."

He would take me to gay bars,

and he would take me to lesbian bars, and he'd like sit me down,

he'd go, "This is what you want."

I go, "No, I really just want to go home.

Can I just go home and do my homework?"

[Hillson] The course always ended with the degree show.

No other college

had ever been invited, as I was, to show during British Fashion Week.

[McKitterick] He called me when he was nearly finishing the final collection

and asked me to come in

to have a look at it and talk to him about it.

It had all the elements.

It had the history of the East End. It had the darkness.

"Jack The Ripper Stalks His Victims."

It had the research.

It had a really great story behind it.

[Barton] He was reading books like Perfume,

which is all about the murder of women,

and he had a very dark side to him as well,

so he was drawing from all of these influences

and then creating something very beautiful out of it.

[dramatic music playing]

[woman] The pieces went past me,

and they moved in a way I've never seen.

I wanted them. They were modern. They were classical.

[music continues playing]

He would do a black coat,

and then he'd line it with human hair,

and it was blood-red inside, so it was like a body.

It was like the flesh with blood.

And I just thought,

"This is the most beautiful thing I've ever seen."

It was about sabotage and tradition,

which is the perfect combination,

and beauty, violence.

All the things that I suppose the '90s represent.

[audience applause]

[man] How difficult is it to discover genius?

[Isabella] Not at all difficult, 'cause they have it, and I spot it.

[man] If you're interested in the history

of late 20-century clothes,

Isabella Blow is a big player.

[Isabella] I was at American Vogue,

and Anna Wintour sort of discovered me,

and I worked for her.

Then I went to British Vogue.

McQueen was her knight,

and she was gonna take him to the top.

She was determined.

[Isabella] I knew. I rang up his mother and said,

"You've produced a genius."

I think he's like the Saint Laurent of the year 2000.

And his mother said to him

that there's this mad woman who keeps trying to call us.

I don't know. She wants some of your clothes.

I rang between six and eight times a day.

Finally, I got a little voice on the end of the line. "Hello?"

So I said, "Yes. Can I come make an appointment with you?

My name's Isabella Blow."

I don't know to this day if he knew who I was.

No. I just wanted the money. I was desperate for money.

I wasn't interested in him, either. I just wanted the clothes.

I didn't give her no money off.

I said, "That's 350, love. You can take it or leave it."

And, uh, she loved that.

It wasn't until I went to the Bluebird Garage collection that he did

that I just thought, "What have I unleashed?"

And he walked across, said, "I owe it all to you,"

which I thought was very, very sweet,

because it was far from true.

He'd worked every inch of the way himself.

[dramatic music playing]

[music stops]

Every fashion designer wants to create an illusion,

create things that disturb, fascinate people.

Clothes are really beautiful to work with,

but there's also a reality outside.

Some people don't want to hear it.

It's all lovey-dovey,

and everything's fine in the world all the time,

and I tell it the way it is.

[man] In the '90s, you used to make clothes to go out,

and you used to make something just for that night.

You're going to this nightclub, this person is on or that DJ.

Right. What are we going to do?

I think Lee took everything.

That's one of Lee's strengths,

that he took a lot of Bowery's esthetic...

it's transgressive, it's in your face

and thought, "How does this translate onto a runway?"

Lee also used that language of fetish

in terms of rubber and latex and leather...

and put it into his fashion design.

We started going out with each other,

but part of me was thinking,

"But also, it's quite useful

'cause I can sew as well."

It was literally anyone that could sew,

and it didn't matter whether they were any good particularly at sewing or not.

Were they willing to come and sit in the studio

for 16 hours a day,

and were they going to be good fun to be around.

Lee that was the badly behaved, naughty school boy

that was always doing pranks on people in the pub,

and that's the person that I liked, loved.

[screaming]

[music playing in the background]

[woman] At the time I first met Lee, I was living in Hoxton Square,

and one day, in pops this guy,

and I kind of figured he had rented the downstairs.

"Come in for a cup of tea."

And he asked what I did.

I said, "I do grooming for men, hair and makeup."

And he goes, "I'm having a show soon.

Would you do the hair and makeup for the guys?"

I was like, "Don't you need to see some of my work first?"

I'd never done a show before, so... he's like, "No, I can tell. I can tell."

[woman] He said to me one day, "I've decided to do my own collection."

And I remember thinking, "How on earth does he think

he's gonna have a business and make a collection?"

He has got nothing.

He's got no money, no wherewithal,

no studio, nobody to support him, nothing behind him.

And yet he was determined this was what he was gonna do.

I survived on unemployment benefit,

and I bought all my fabric...

[laughs]

I bought all my fabrics with my dole money.

And I went round to my parents for baked beans

and tins of soup and things like...

[laughs]

[making violin sounds]

This is my pooch.

[Smith] He said to me, "I really need to get a logo."

We asked my boyfriend at the time if he would design it.

It was my idea to put the "C" inside the "Q,"

but then Dave designed the rest of it.

He was fantastic at getting people to do a phenomenal amount of work for him,

and we were never, ever paid.

In fact, we were paying him to work for him.

How amazing is that?

[Chai-Hyde] Just to be part of it,

be part of his vision, yeah.

He had that, even from the very beginning, that pull.

-[McQueen] Warhol. -[woman] Woo!

[McQueen] Yeah.

[woman] Dance for me.

Come on, keep it going.

[woman laughs]

[Smith] Isabella was very keen to call him Alexander,

just because she thought it sounded better as a designer.

Sounded grander and more romantic.

Issie got criticized for trying to make him posh.

So what? [chuckles] Good for Issie.

She was trying to make him successful.

And she did. Alexander McQueen is a brand.

[woman] Why do you love her so much, Lee?

She's the same as me. She doesn't care. She doesn't care what people think.

At the end of the day, we're...

we're separate entities to everyone else,

and we have our own personal view about things.

You fall in love with somebody, you love it and you nurture it,

and you look after it like it's your garden.

People garden. They cook. They do the same thing.

My ingredients are clothes.

[woman] She introduced him to everyone. She championed him.

So I suppose what initially started

as a work relationship for her became a creative friendship.

[Groves] She was someone that was always really excited

and wanted to see the next thing and the new thing

and wanted to push people.

It was never about money, as in I never saw any money

going forwards between either of them.

[Detmar] I just remember the laughter,

exciting creativity of the mid-90s and the adventure.

They were on this rocket. They shot to the moon.

[indistinct chatter]

You're a hungry little thing.

[Detmar] The early days were very happy days,

and it was short times,

but they were beautiful, and they were funny.

And Issie didn't have children,

so she threw her maternal love to her protégé.

I looked forward to seeing Alexander 'cause he made me laugh so much.

Issie and McQueen had a dirty sense of humor.

McQueen would describe Issie

as a cross between Lucrezia Borgia

and a Billingsgate fishwife.

Issie had a very vulgar humor.

I always found the cocks and the cunts slightly--

I was a bit, "Oh." [laughs]

I wasn't really into their earthy humor,

but however rude McQueen got, Issie was even worse.

They loved to play off each other like that, be outrageous.

I know Alexander loves birds,

so I've got this bird hat on designed by Philip

'cause we're gonna go out to do some falconry tomorrow,

'cause Alexander's got a very--

You know he's passionate about birds.

We're going to fly some falcons tomorrow afternoon.

[bird squawks]

[gentle music playing]

[cries out]

[man] We did go and stay at Hilles a few times.

He would end up diving into Issie's dressing-up box

and we'd all be wearing sort of fantastical costumes

for dinner and things like that.

The world she inhabited

was so far removed from the world

that any of us had come from.

There was a sort of unreality to it.

Whenever we went to that house, you felt so at home.

And I think Lee felt very at home there.

[Detmar] They had this big sister-- fun person-- to be with, who's outrageous.

With Issie, be as different as you can... [chuckles] ...and keep going.

The more different, the more I love it.

I really don't like the normal. I don't think it's--

You don't move forward.

Seriously, you just don't move forward

if you play safe.

You really do piss a lot of people off.

[both laughing]

[Smith] His first shows were unbelievable.

People were winded by them.

People walked out. Quite a few acerbic reviews.

But everything else before paled into comparison.

I don't want to do a show that you walk out feeling like you've just had Sunday lunch.

I want you to come out either feeling repulsed or exhilarated,

as long as it's an emotion.

If you leave without emotion,

then I'm not doing my job properly, so that's that.

That's the thing about Alexander, I think his clothes are very emotional.

This coat is, like, based on a tramp,

so it's based on someone who hasn't got any money,

standing in the street, nowhere to sleep.

You wrap it round yourself, you feel fantastic.

Then you have all this passion and love

and slashing and sex and romance.

[McQueen] The idea of the collection was never to produce.

The shows were all about publicity and creating a marketing ploy

for Alexander McQueen, the designer.

The clothes were impossible to reproduce

'cause they were made out of plastic bags or masking tape.

They were show clothes.

[Groves] Lee had started doing bumsters.

These were cut so low

that you could see the model's pubic hair.

[McQueen] It's nothing to do with pubic hair.

It's just a technical thing where, as a tailor knows,

you're breaking up the proportion of the body,

by lowering the trousers, elongating the torso.

It's nothing to do with bum cleavage,

but that's an added bonus if you've got a nice bum, so...

[Detmar] He told that model Gabe,

"Put your pubic hairs in Anna Wintour's face."

[laughing]

It's just funny. Naughty behavior.

You could give Alexander £500,

and he could produce 30 pieces of clothing.

[Detmar] He saw some cling foil on the floor, and he said,

"I'm just gonna make a dress out of that.

I'm gonna put the model, wrap her up,"

and he just cut this dress, put a zip in it,

and suddenly, that went down the runway.

[Chai-Hyde] Getting a tire and running it over the suit.

[laughing]

Just things like that. Just genius.

Four pounds worth of lace. Invisible zip-- one pound.

Sprayed with car spray paint.

Probably cost less than ten pounds, those dresses to make.

But through that weird alchemy of being cut and made by Lee,

suddenly, they're being requested.

Avedon wanted to have this dress for Sharon Stone.

So it has to be in America now.

Need someone to fly over with the dress on Concorde.

That still upsets me to this day. I didn't get to go on Concorde.

It was me.

[Detmar] That's almost the period

where I think the madness really kicked in.

[McQueen] The show was brilliant, but I'll wake up tomorrow morning,

think, "I've got to get a bottle of milk.

Where am I going to get 42p from?"

[Groves] So we went to a McDonald's,

got two cheeseburgers, two fries, two Cokes,

and I was that tired that I just dropped the tray,

and then we were having to pick the food up off the floor.

And I thought, "This is a weird world

that you've shown the finale of London Fashion Week,

but we haven't got five quid to eat."

[McQueen] That's how it is.

People don't understand that.

You do fucking fab shows, but got to start living.

[Groves] The Clothes Show, BBC One.

At the time, 12 million viewers. You're 22 years old.

You're not in any of the shots being interviewed,

and you're dictating the terms on how you're going to appear.

[McQueen] Because I was doing the shows

on money that I got from unemployment benefit,

I could not afford to show my face on camera,

because I would be arrested for working as well as signing on.

-Did it piss you off? -[reporter] No...

It should have done. That was the idea.

[McQueen] I really worked that East End yob,

this juxtaposition between a hooligan

and someone that uses a needle, and people couldn't fathom it.

That's how it was new. It was a breath of fresh air.

Savile Row, Cockney geezer, ding-dong, all of that.

He was aware how seductive that was.

I get a bit annoyed when I read that.

[McQueen] Oi!

[Joyce] He was far from a bad boy.

In fact, he was a very loving, happy child and very generous.

[woman] Beautiful face, huh?

[Groves] I just remember this one time when I went round his house.

I think I'd said something was shit or something in front of his mum,

and he just turned round, glared at me and said,

"Don't you fucking swear in front of my fucking mother."

[Joyce] We were never what people called poor.

My husband was a London taxi driver,

so even though there was six children,

they all had everything that they should have had.

I don't know. It just seems...

like honest.

An honest place round here.

You know where you stand, if you know what I mean.

If someone's gonna mug you, they tell you before they do it.

I'm only joking. [laughing]

[man] From our granddads, he got the sense of humor,

which was, at times, wicked.

[laughing]

[woman] I think he struggled coming out of that background

and going into the world.

That was the choice I made to come out to my father.

I told all my brothers and sisters and aunts,

but my father was a London taxi driver.

He would come home at night and say,

"God, I nearly run over a bloody queer last night in Soho,"

and I'd have to deal with this.

My dad could be a bit cutting sometimes,

but he was joking,

and if you didn't know him,

you'd probably take that the wrong way.

[Chai-Hyde] Lee's father is saying, "Sell your clothes in Brick Lane,"

and never quite understanding what Lee was doing.

[McQueen] My dad wanted me to be some sort of mechanic or something,

but it never worked out that way.

[interviewer laughs]

[man] From our nan, he got that storytelling,

that dark romance of the Victorian times.

I think that really lent itself

to his visions of the stories that he wanted to tell.

[indistinct chatter]

[man] It's not that...

It makes it smell.

-[McQueen] Come here. -No, I'm too ugly.

[McQueen] You broke the camera! Yeah, I know.

[Groves] She was very strong and powerful

and quite a lot was unsaid, but my God, you realized

there was a really strong bond between them.

[Smith] She made him feel like he could do anything.

I always encouraged them to read and have lots of books,

because I myself loved history and things like that.

That's one about a Highland clan.

[woman] She was looking to genealogy of the McQueen family

and aimed at proving that the McQueens

came from McQueens of the Isle of Skye.

[Gary] It opened up his world.

He was born in Stratford,

but he knew there was this other life for him,

which come from Scotland.

[Smith] She encouraged the sort of fantasy and excitement

of those stories, and Lee went with it.

[McQueen] You have two types of Scotland people will associate themselves with,

the Vivienne Westwood romantic Scotland,

swathes of tartan silk.

My ancestry is the Jacobites of Scotland,

the war of the English and the Scottish,

where the English raped loads of women, killed clans completely off,

and it's like a form of genocide, it was then.

And people don't realize this.

I mean, take Bosnia. How many dead people have you seen?

There's millions of dead people in Bosnia.

It's just genocide in the end, and people have got to realize

that it still goes on in the world today.

[tearing sound]

[woman] Something different about him.

He had this artistic energy in him

rather than like a fashion designer.

I rang his mother and say, "I want to work for your son."

She gave me the address, and I went one morning,

and ever since, we were working every day

on the Highland Rape collection,

trying to get the pieces ready.

[Chai-Hyde] There were times when he hadn't yet started working on the collection,

and it was due soon, and he would do one drawing after another

after another, after another after another, and there was a collection in one evening.

Very quick, very fluid.

[Danan] He was also very creative at night.

His adrenaline was much more alive,

and we usually used to put music.

[Chai-Hyde] He would listen to The Piano, and it became very important.

The composer Michael Nyman became part of his team.

I was just enjoying myself to watch him,

because he was sitting like an old lady,

his needle and his thimble.

You can feel like he's--

it's kind of a therapeutic work for him.

[Smith] He went into a sort of zone,

and I always used to say his eyes went black,

because he suddenly was focusing on what he was doing,

and he almost couldn't hear anybody else.

[Groves] He could draft a jacket freehand

just with a piece of chalk, so he wasn't using measurements.

He could just, from his eye, read someone's body measurements

and be able to draw that out onto a bit of cloth.

At heart, Lee was a romantic,

and that romantic is because of that physical relationship

to what you produce,

which then comes back to that idea of craft, in a way.

[Gary] The family would always get invites to the shows.

Yeah, it was very important my nan was there.

He really wanted to make my nan proud.

[Janet] Aunt Renee and Mum

made sure that the models had some sandwiches.

Mum would have probably done her sausage rolls.

[woman] We were all really,

as a group of young, really cool English models,

so excited to see this man that had this reputation.

[Janet] I was amazed at all these people, photographers,

and I thought, "My God, they're all here to see Lee."

I hope they're not disappointed,

because I thought, "This is just Lee from Stratford."

[dramatic music playing]

The darkness,

the going to the depths and the recesses of one's mind

to come up with such things like Highland Rape.

I'm going to send them down, loads of girls,

like they've look like they've just been raped.

But then we were all looking like

we'd come out of a hedge backwards,

and I was going, "Is this the hair and makeup?"

[Groves] They're not easy garments to look at.

They do look like something from a crime scene.

[Kidd] I honestly just thought that he really didn't like women,

he didn't like the models, he didn't like anything.

He was just trying to torture us all.

But his vision,

when you actually came down and the silhouette

and the way he made you look was so extraordinary.

I don't think I really understood, because... 15 at the time,

exactly what was going on or the connotations of it.

It wasn't until probably the next day that I read the newspapers

and there was quite a backlash of the statement of the show.

I mean, it was pretty intense.

But he made every single headline,

and that's what he wanted to do, and he sure got it.

[female reporter] Judith Church, MP for Dagenham,

thought there was no excuse for such a show.

[woman] The very title of the show, Highland Rape,

has been done to shock people. It's been done to attract publicity.

It has succeeded, and that, in a way, is sad,

because I think women want to look at fashion,

but they don't want to see it

in some way as portraying them as a victim.

[McQueen] I'm not misogynist, but the idea was saying to the public,

"A man takes from a woman. The woman's not giving it."

And that's what rape is.

My oldest sister was badly beaten up by her husband.

When you're eight years old

and you're seeing your sister

strangled by her husband,

who's now dead, thank God,

you know, all you wanna do is make women look stronger.

[Groves] You might not like the honesty he was presenting you with,

you might find it distasteful, shocking or aggressive or misogynistic,

but for him, it was his truth.

Those garments all tell you about Lee,

and they're almost, like, confessional.

They do relate to things that happened in his childhood.

We were just in our flat.

It was literally in the middle of the evening.

and he said, "By the way,

I was abused when I was a child by my brother-in-law."

It just came out, and he started crying,

and we started talking,

then almost as soon as he'd started telling me all about,

he said, "I don't want to talk about that anymore."

[Gary] The stuff that he saw, the violence against my mum,

the abuse he suffered by my dad

and the abuse my mum suffered by dad,

they had that affinity together, they shared that, Lee and my mum.

They were both affected by the same person,

and they had that connection through that.

And Lee saw my mum very much like a mother figure

and somebody that he wanted to protect,

but my mum wanted to protect him as well.

I had some--

quite a big burden on my shoulders...

um...

but I'd always felt close to Lee, and...

in the early years,

Lee had seen things like domestic violence, and...

at the time, it must have also had an effect on his mind.

[Gary] That stuff he had to get out.

I think it was a way of exorcising his demons,

a way of protecting women and himself

by creating these strong women

who looked like they had armor on.

It was armor for his heart as well, so...

[Groves] The relationship between me and Lee,

I joked that it was four seasons long,

purely because I think those collections

and those shows became markers in terms of how our work life

was also tied up with our relationship.

And looking back on it now, I can see the reasons why it would be--

how could a relationship work

with all the things that were going on in his life,

all the things in his past?

I can't think of any relationship that would be able to deal with that.

[dramatic music playing]

[camera flash fires]

When you went to St. Martins, in the first year, you go to Paris,

and the idea is that you're meant to go to exhibitions.

But we just spent all of our time wangling our way into various shows.

So we went to this show, and it was all very floral,

and there was chiffon, and Lee was going,

"That's rubbish. That's rubbish. Oh, my God.

No, this is the worst show ever. Bloody hell.

Givenchy, that's a load of crap. That's for, like, old ladies.

I never, ever want to work somewhere like that."

[in French]

It was a really exciting time to be covering the industry...

because it was changing, it was evolving.

People like Bernard Arnault were buying up small family brands

and then turning them into global corporations.

At first, he brought in John Galliano,

and after two years, moved John over to Dior

and then needed another new, young, hot flavor for Givenchy.

[man] And so he said... Why did he want you?

He said when I was hired that I was his horse.

[man] Yeah.

I don't know if that's in looks or what, but...

[both laugh]

But he said I was his horse he betted on.

I was living with Lee when Givenchy called,

and he thought they wanted him to design a handbag.

And I'm like, "Wow. Cool, man." You know?

Next thing I know, um...

he comes in, and he basically says that

they've asked him to be creative director of Givenchy.

And I was like, "You are kidding me."

He called me at work, and then he said, "They've offered me this job.

Now if I move to Paris, will you come with me?"

And I was like, "Yeah, of course."

It was so exciting

and also quite scary as well

because it was still the honeymoon period of our relationship.

[man] Why did you go to Givenchy, having already created your own name,

having won British Designer of the Year twice in a row?

[McQueen] For one reason, the money was good.

But then, what I do with the money from Givenchy,

I put it straight back into McQueen,

and it helps me employ people for McQueen to build my own company up.

[Chai-Hyde] Very talented people that he brought with him to Givenchy.

What a team, man.

[man] He told me, "I will need a team to work with me,

so I was thinking of you...

so think about it and let me know."

There's nothing to think about. Of course I take the job. [scoffs]

We took an airplane from City Airport.

We were the weirdest people in the plane.

It was all, like, businessmen,

and we were there with our bleached jeans

with a lot of attitude.

[McQueen] Where did you buy this, in Japan?

[indistinct chatter]

Really?

[indistinct chatter]

[in French] Paris...

-[laughing] -Woo!

[Murray] There was huge excitement

because imagine when you're that age

and you're being given that amount of this,

one, responsibility and also that amount of money.

[McQueen] Statue.

[Murray] There's Sebastian Pons.

[McQueen] Hello, Sebastian.

Sweaty armpits. God, you got wet patches.

I think that in the McQueen studio,

I was a little bit like the buffoon

'cause I was the funny one there.

They were taking the piss of my accent.

Spanish buffoon in a British coat.

Simon Costin.

[McQueen] God, you're looking kind of gross today, Simon.

I saw myself as the person that put things into context.

The set was always there to reflect

the sort of untold story of the collection.

There was Katy, of course, Katy England.

[McQueen] Katy's the most important part of McQueen.

Camera up, please.

She's the Tweedledee to my Tweedledum.

She fuels my imagination.

I help research the collection.

I bring things to his attention

that I think might be important in fashion.

Basically, I'm always there at the right-hand side.

Shaun Leane was very much involved in the business making jewelry.

What do you think? Fancy a dance?

[Leane] For me to do work like this is very good for me.

It allows me to go from one extreme to the other,

and now I'm going into different areas. I'm working with body jewelry,

and it's really going into a form of sculpture, really.

Sarah Burton. Sarah was the intern.

He looked at us like the sort of pillars

that will make him feel secure.

[Murray] We had this really nice flat.

I loved the area. Place des Vosges. I mean, hello.

[McQueen] God, that's pretty scary.

[Costin] Thinking about it now, it was tiny.

When I would come over to start working on the set,

I'd be on the sofa.

[McQueen shouts]

[McQueen] Sebastian.

[shrieks] Ooh, language!

[laughing]

I always ended up sleeping in Lee's room

because Lee was always collapsing on the sofa.

[Sebastian] Lee.

-You changed the pillow. -[McQueen] Yeah, fucking right.

[laughing]

We had a driver, so we got driven everywhere.

[McQueen] Wait a minute. He gone blind today.

Say hello to the people of England.

[laughter]

Such fun.

Could do some funny tricks, sort of.

Oh, I'm on speed, baby.

[laughing]

[Sebastian] When we arrive at Givenchy,

everybody was kind of like bending their head to him

and calling him Monsieur McQueen,

which was, "They calling you Monsieur McQueen here?

[McQueen calls and laughs]

[Sebastian] When we arrived, I think they were in shock,

the way we dress, the way we work,

and the jokes we made.

[Costin] It was very grand. There's chandeliers.

It was different from the working environment in London,

which was a kind of very, very small room

with chaotic stuff everywhere.

[McQueen] Here I have my own office.

I pick up the phone, and I get what I want.

[chuckles] 'Cause I want it, I want it, I want it... so I ask for it.

[Murray] It was just like a bunch of young kids running about in the Givenchy.

[man] Were they surprised that you were chosen?

I think they-- would put most people in a coma.

[laughter]

[Pons] All of a sudden, we're there sitting in the Givenchy House

looking out the window,

and you see the Balenciaga sign

and you knew that Yves Saint Laurent was there

and knowing that John Galliano was there, Avenue Montaigne,

just a few yards from there.

And there we are with Alexander McQueen

being the new talk of the town.

And that felt special.

[Murray] He was trying to find his feet there.

Obviously had to make a huge impression

because it was his first collection.

[Pons] And I remember telling Lee,

"Everybody's looking at us, and we have nothing."

And he always would answer,

"Don't worry, Sebastian. We'll get it done."

[McQueen] This is Paris and Paris chic.

This is Givenchy. This is not McQueen.

This is where elegant suits are made and fantastic fabrics are used.

It's going to take my own label, McQueen,

another 40 years to get the reputation this one has.

[Pons] I remember once we saw this beautiful work.

Lee asked Catherine De Londres, was the charge of atelier,

"Who's done this fabulous work?"

"She's not allowed to come in."

He's like, "What do you mean she's not allowed to come in?

Please let her in."

I remember from that day on, Lee wanted to see the person

who has worked directly with the garment,

and I think they loved that.

[McQueen] This is the Bet Lynch dress.

I also treated it,

bonding plastic over the top for raincoats,

so you get the whole ensemble.

None of us spoke French,

and the French atelier didn't speak English.

Lee would actually kind of like draw in the air

how it would have to be.

-Mais la jupe? -Yeah. It's okay.

-La jupe-- -Oh, jupe. It's okay.

-I think she-- -I thought it was pantalon.

[De Londres in French]

[chuckles]

They're quite precise, and, like, take the threads out,

and I just get the scissors and go whack it off

and they go... [silent]

...like that, and I go, "It's okay. It's only clothes."

[Chai-Hyde] I'll never forget the expression on her face,

but in the end, she saw exactly what he was doing.

She was in awe.

A very mutual respect grew between the two of them.

[McQueen] Haute couture is about the atelier.

I come from Savile Row,

so I have great respect for the tailors.

They deserve just as much praise as I do.

[Pons] Lee, one day he said,

"Where can we go and eat? Where do the workers eat?"

And then Catherine said,

"No, there is a canteen on the basement for the workers."

And Lee was like, "So let's go there."

When we went down there, the people, they're flipping out,

like, "Alexander is eating with us."

They couldn't believe it.

These fashion houses,

they treat the designer like he's a king,

and they treated Lee like a king,

but Lee didn't want to behave like a king.

Lee wanted to behave like a regular person.

Okay.

The ideas for the show, they grew out of the collection.

As the collection developed,

he would pull threads and stories out of that.

And there was always mood boards and things pinned all over the walls.

Everyone fed in. It was a very group practice,

but Lee was the spider in the center of the web, as it were,

pulling everything together

and distilling what it was that he had in his head.

I remember the fraughtness about a week before the show

when things were coming down and not right,

and things having to be changed.

It was really insanely crazy. The pressure was super-intense.

[Pons] In 25 days, to put a 55-outfit collection together

is not an easy task.

[Costin] The first couture show had the theme of the Golden Fleece.

Jason and the Argonauts.

[Murray] They wanted it to be amazing.

My first feeling from Alex's description

was there had to be warriors

mixed with goddess.

I say, "We do horns." He say, "Yeah, but do big."

I say, "But how big?"

He say, "You know Genghis Khan is the junior size.

Give me the senior."

It's the 19th of January, 1997,

and as they say in the trade,

we're about to witness a fashion moment.

At the tender age of 27,

British Designer of the Year, Alexander McQueen,

is about to show his first haute couture collection.

[dramatic music playing]

[Jurnjack] Every model had to have a character,

an identity, a signature.

Every single girl could have been shown on her own.

Where's the inspiration come from? He told me, "From the logo."

The logo is the Gs, which it looks like Greek motif,

and the Givenchy label is white and gold.

[woman] And always with Lee's collections,

there were some pieces where you were...

"Oh! That's rather risqué."

I think a lot of the press focused on the ones

that were a little bit crazy or a little bit unwearable.

French designers were complaining and saying,

"Oh, you know, they're not even French,

and they're taking over Givenchy.

Look what he's doing to Givenchy."

I think it was them saying, "I'm still gonna be who I am.

Regardless that you put me in this posh space, I'm still who I am."

I liked that, that they stayed true to who they were.

They actually brought England into Paris in their own unique way.

[applause]

[Pons] People were talking, fashion editors.

"He has a big mouth." "He has a big head."

"The British, what does he think?"

And then I understood

that basically the world was against him.

[man] You go to do your first show, it's not a huge success. No?

-No, that's true. Well done. -[both laugh]

They were wishing to see him crash and be destroyed.

They have claws, and they have knives,

and they've thrown everything into your back, which is fine,

-'cause I'm a good fighter... -[both laugh]

I remember us afterwards, Lee was...

Hellish, yeah. That was a really hard night.

It was a difficult night after that.

A few punches and arguments.

[Isabella] I think he's already done a lot for the house,

because Givenchy have had a lot of press.

It's a more difficult thing to deal with 'cause McQueen is McQueen in London.

Givenchy is taking over from another man in Paris.

As Alexander says himself,

"It's like taking a dinosaur out of the sea,"

and I think in one season, he's done that.

So I think in a year, he will have done 20 times that.

[Detmar] Givenchy changed everything.

The fun times were over.

I had an accountant who spoke French,

and I'm going to Paris to sign the deal.

And I said, "Please make sure Issie gets something out of it."

I kind of did ask McQueen, and McQueen said,

"Issie and I are not about money."

When the money did come and Alexander cut her out,

that was very tough.

The friendship changed. She was so hurt, this rejection.

She'd have created a buzz.

She'd have had a salon at Givenchy.

She'd have made it the most happening place in Paris.

[Murray] I do remember going to Hilles straight after the takeover at Givenchy.

[no audible dialog]

You can't imagine the tension between the two of them

in this room.

These designers think that you made me...

-[Isabella] No, they don't. -It's never been about--

No, they don't. They know that that--

They do!

'Cause don't you see it all the time in the press?

"Isabella Blow responsible for Philip Treacy and Alexander McQueen?"

-[Isabella] No. They say... -They do just say that.

The thing is, it's never been about that for me and you.

-Whether I was part of it-- -Does that annoy you

that they always put "as discovered by Isabella Blow?"

Does it really piss you off?

Not at all because Issie has helped me a lot in that way,

but not in a way that she's all like,

she does it because she loves my clothes,

not because she loves me.

-Exactly. That's the point. -Ah!

I can't stand her guts.

-[laughter] -I'm joking. [laughs]

[Murray] I do remember sitting there, thinking to myself,

"Please lay off Issie,

because she's done nothing but help you,

but you seem to be giving her a really difficult time."

[Detmar] Issie, kingmaker, and this is a man she championed,

and then he resented that and wanted to be his own man,

so there was no position for Isabella Blow at Givenchy.

Punishment.

And I remember McQueen turned to me and said,

"I'm the tycoon now, Detmar,"

and it wasn't meant affectionately.

We had a policy, don't show hurt,

don't show weakness, keep your head up,

keep proud, keep fighting.

Something will turn up. It's got to.

His star ascended, and hers didn't as much,

and, you know, he slightly abandoned her.

[Detmar] Then Issie suddenly got this job at the Sunday Times,

and McQueen said, "You've been resurrected, Issie,"

and, yeah, I thought, "No thanks to you, mate." [laughs]

[McQueen] I saw myself within the press and in the public eye

as the gazelle, and a gazelle always got eaten.

And that's how I see human life.

We can all be discarded quite easily.

The fragility of a designer's time in the press.

You're there, you're gone.

[laughs]

It's a jungle out there.

[Pons] I went to his London studio,

and he was talking about the haute couture show.

"I tried to please them, and then I fucked it up,

so I'm gonna do my own thing.

It's gonna be very McQueen, the next one."

"Fuck you.

Fuck you, all of you. I'm gonna show you."

[Costin] We went from this sort of, the hallowed halls of Givenchy,

into a sort of rough, gritty Borough Market.

People sweeping all the rotting fruit and veg up.

[McQueen] It's nice to show them the rough part of London,

make them scared, look over their shoulder once in a while.

[Jurnjack] It's nothing to do with couture. Now you forgot Givenchy.

We're in another chapter, in another world, in another McQueen.

All camera crews go round the front gate.

[Costin] The London shows were always--

the audience, the expectation was so great.

The shows in Paris were far more formal and reserved.

People would scream their heads off in London.

[audience clamoring]

[woman] It was crazy.

People literally fighting to see the catwalk.

[Murray] Lee running from model to model

and screaming and shouting at everyone.

No. We want to start the show. Get back out there.

[Chai-Hyde] Always moving, always dressing, always stressing.

Stressing and dressing, actually, together.

[woman backstage] They're all standing by, ready to go.

Where's Russell? Is he out there? Is he getting ready?

Yeah. Yep.

[Chai-Hyde] One of the models was late.

He said, "Fuck her," and he started the show.

[Kidd] He used to go, "Right, Jods. Just go for it."

He used to psych me up, and I used to get out onto the catwalk and go... [growl]

[dramatic music playing]

[Costin] It was really the first time that the collection

kind of seeped out into everything,

from the energy that was in that space

to the effect it had on people.

A sort of angst, an anger and fear

that was woven through that show.

[Pons] We were mind-blown,

because they didn't look like models.

They look like animals.

Just big hair and this animal makeup--

it was, like... it was intense.

[Costin] There were some students that weren't allowed in

that stormed the barricades

and kicked over all these fire pots.

And then the fire started.

[Costin] 'Cause there were a pile of crashed cars,

and I don't think we'd emptied the cars of petrol.

[Kidd] The car's actually on fire.

There's a fricking car on fire on the catwalk.

[Costin] Everyone thought it was part of the show.

[Kidd] He's going, "Don't you -- dare

go out there with fire extinguishers."

To just keep sending them out, keep sending them out.

[Shaw] Had that not been rectified, that whole tent

and all the top fashion editors and models would have been history.

[Smith] That's back to typical, wonderful,

mad, brilliant Lee.

[dramatic music playing]

[music stops]

[reporter] Did you move out of London?

Did you settle in Paris now?

I stay both.

I'm here for six months and London six months. All over.

My dog is in London, and I'm missing him.

I'm missing my dog.

[Chai-Hyde] Traveling between the two cities to do Givenchy and McQueen,

of course... it would take its toll.

But he did it, and he managed to make the shows amazing.

By that time, there was so much more pressure,

because he was also doing his own line

and then having to do ready-to-wear haute couture.

You could see the beginning of the pressure that Lee was under.

[Pons] The favorite company of LVMH was Dior.

Lee felt they were really comparing him with Galliano.

And then he sort of found out

that John had four times more budget than him

to create his haute couture collection.

The house we loved was the McQueen house.

Givenchy was like a stepbrother.

We knew that our time there had an expiry date.

When we arrived for Paris, Lee's clothes tend to be very rigid,

and I think in Paris,

he got to discover the soft side of things.

We took that and we brought it to London.

For the number 13, I remember him very happy.

Lee had it very clear on his head

what he wanted to do.

We all left the meeting thinking,

"Oh, my God, he has it very clear this season.

He knows what colors, he knows the shape."

Him himself was feeling at peace, you know?

The first show I ever worked on with Lee,

he liked the idea of robots.

[Pons] Lee keep going on about, "I'm gonna have this robot, this model,"

and we were like, "No, the robots again. Oh, my God."

We were just hoping he was gonna forget the idea,

but then, the night before the show, the robot did turn up,

and we didn't have a dress to go with the robot.

I went back to the studio. I was like,

"Guys, we need to make a dress for the finale."

Who went under the table and pulled all this tulle out.

And he was like, "Hey, there's the dress."

[piano music playing]

[Chai-Hyde] They told him it was impossible,

and he said, "No, it's not. You can do it."

And that's what Lee did for people--

he made them do the impossible.

[Bennett] He got some technician down to operate the robots,

and Lee was straight, "Yeah, let's make the robots do more of this."

So Lee's directing these robots like they're actors,

and consequently, you end up with this incredible choreography

and her spinning.

[McQueen] You had Shalom Harlow there

and these two robots going round, and the thing is,

the robots looked like they were a mind of their own.

[music continues playing]

[McQueen] Think that's the first time that I was blown away by my own show.

That man-and-machine thing at the end is-- I'm still in shock, really.

That's the first time I've cried at my show, so...

Yeah.

[music continues playing]

[Janet] Lee was living his dream.

He would never have given the work up, as hard as it was,

because you get that one chance in life.

[Chai-Hyde] First time I knew that Lee was actually getting very famous

is when some stranger came up to us in the supermarket

and asked for his autograph.

And I remember him saying to me, "My God, that's so scary."

And I realized then that something was happening.

He was breaking outside of fashion and becoming famous.

[Smith] That whole celebrity thing, people chasing after him--

'cause you got the feeling he was saying,

"This isn't the important thing. This fame is nonsense.

The important thing is what I do."

[Murray] Sometimes wish he just had a normal life

and that he could just be a normal person,

in terms of not having that pressure of everything

at such a young age.

[Chai-Hyde] I knew Lee when he had nothing

but a rubbish bin full of clothes,

so I saw very quickly him become a millionaire and more.

And the more money he had, he seemed to be more unhappy.

'Cause with the money came drugs, and that was a sad thing.

[Chai-Hyde] When did it become bad? Well...

It became bad when the pressure became too much for him,

and he obviously started dealing with it in ways

he shouldn't have, unfortunately.

[Detmar] And with it came an aggressiveness,

like kind of anger and a sort of paranoia.

But he's still producing great clothes,

but the personality changed, huh?

[McQueen] You know what I mean? And all the hard work I do.

I do ten collections a year, and it's hard work.

I didn't go to Givenchy. They come to me.

So I got really upset when people started saying

I was gonna get fired when it wasn't true.

So, sod the lot of you. I do what I like.

[Murray] There was definitely a change and definitely a move in our relationship,

who had two sides to them.

He could come in a super-cool mood,

like, full of laughter and that,

or it could be a devil crossing the door.

[Murray] He was obviously a very troubled person...

and the darkness created this amazing creativity

and genius artist.

I had a tattoo saying "McQueen" on my arm.

I got it covered up, and I think when he found out,

that was kind of like the end of everything.

[Smith] Lee was a romantic,

and I think he flirted always with the idea of love.

I'm not sure whether he ever achieved it.

The big thing in his life that he was in love with was his work.

And also, he didn't trust anyone.

He thought if the boyfriend is not here, it's because he's with someone else,

and that made him suffer a lot.

[McQueen] People forget what fashion's always been about.

It's about attracting a mate. It's about sexuality.

It's about showing a person who you are.

Uh... I'm sorry if you think I'm stupid.

Even I'm chubby, and I would like to look smaller.

I mean, let's be realistic here.

[Smith] And even when he changed his appearance, and he said,

"I changed myself. It was the wrong thing to do.

Because I completely lost touch with who I was."

[McKitterick] What was it? Ten years from Lee, little Lee McQueen,

sat in the corner of my studio sewing away,

to this svelte figure dressed in Comme des Garçons,

having to become something he didn't really want to be--

this sort of persona, this Alexander McQueen.

[McKitterick] Six in the morning.

[woman] No, don't do that to her.

[McQueen] She's only got a few hours left.

It wasn't fun anymore for me.

I think that was the bottom line. It wasn't fun anymore.

[woman] I don't like how they...

Take them off now.

[Chai-Hyde] I've never done better work than my time with Lee.

It was times that were dark with him

and times that were very bright, and we all chose it.

We all chose to be there,

and we all chose to not be there sometimes as well.

[Pons] I collapsed once in Givenchy

because of the pressure and the workload.

We had a price to pay, and it was our health.

I grew in the company.

Of course, I wasn't the little boy that I started there.

As I grew up, I realized that I was feeling like

I was a little bit claustrophobic of the situation.

[McQueen] Sebastian.

Come on, you ugly bitch.

[McQueen laughs sarcastically]

It was like full devotion to the McQueen house,

looking after his dogs,

endless hours of working,

and weekends either working or socializing with Lee.

We were going also on holiday together.

I even know how to fake his signature. [laughs] You know!

I was feeling, like, trapped.

Even if I loved what I was doing.

I tried to speak with him,

and that didn't end up that well.

The day I told him I was leaving, he told me,

"You better think about it, because there is no way back."

And I left, and it was really sad, you know, my leaving.

It was no one...

no one, um, came to...

After all the work I've done and... [exhales] Oh...

Unfortunately, Lee took things quite to heart

without maybe thinking about

what the other person was going through or what they needed.

And he would take it very personally

when someone would leave or he felt betrayed.

[Kidd] A lot of people around fashion do suffer from anxiety,

do suffer from panic attacks, depression.

The industry is feeding this ego,

and it has a very negative effect.

[Bennett] For the Voss show, the original concept was the padded cell.

[Kidd] And you start losing who you are, and it becomes a darkness

and a place that you can't get out of.

[Bennett] And, of course, Lee being Lee,

he wasn't happy with just this one really great idea.

You had to have another box in the middle.

He has a kind of theatrical climax to the show.

When he came and sat down to explain what it was,

he wouldn't look me in the eye, and he was saying,

"Yes, it's about death and beauty and rebirth,

and it's gonna be beautiful."

I really wasn't expecting Lee to recreate

Joel-Peter Witkin's famous Incubus image.

It's a pretty gruesome image.

I'm thinking, "Oh, my goodness, am I gonna do this?"

And I was like, "All right, and I will do it,

but I want you to know, serious face,

I'm doing it for art." [laughs]

And he looked at me like I was mad,

and then he looked away, and he went,

"I thought we all were, weren't we?" And he was off.

The actual set had that Stanley Kubrick 2001

meets an insane asylum feel,

and the fact that there was the two-way mirror

so that when the fashion people,

when the fashion press came in to wait for the show to start,

they were all looking at themselves in the mirror.

The music started-- ba-dum, ba-dum, ba-dum--

with his heartbeat that went faster and faster and faster.

[Bennett] We didn't know quite what was gonna expect,

what was gonna happen, and none of the audience knew at all.

[McQueen] Fashion is a big bubble, and sometimes I feel like popping it.

[eerie noises]

[Bennett] Then when the show starts, boom, you can see inside.

The models can't see the audience at all.

[Olley] Was suddenly a much more kind of voyeuristic thing.

The bandages that he put on all the models' heads,

so it had that slight feeling of unease and sickness

and bedlam feel about it.

[wailing voices]

[Chai-Hyde] There was one time that I'd just come out of surgery,

and he came to visit me, and he saw me,

and I had bandages everywhere, and I was all bruised up,

and he was, "Fucking wicked," [fingers click] as he would do that.

He absorbed things like a sponge,

saw the beauty in the ugly, as with the bandages on me.

[wild laugh]

[people whistling]

-[monitor beeping] -[heartbeat]

[McQueen] Life isn't perfect, and we're not all perfect.

We're not all size-zero models,

but there is beauty within the eye of the beholder.

[beeping turns solid]

[Olley] For the final image to be this one of a large woman

with moths everywhere, it sounds like a joke, really,

but I do think there's a sense of humor going on underneath there as well.

It's fat birds and moths.

I mean, isn't that just fashion's worst nightmare?

[applause and whistling]

Every season, whose collections do I look at

and whose collections am I jealous of, in a sense?

And whose collections do I think are absolutely amazing?

[woman] Tom was literally God in the industry.

I guess even if Lee was a rebel...

...and he was a totally different kind of person,

he probably was flattered and touched by the fact

that someone like Tom Ford noticed him and wanted him.

And also, he was smart enough to know

that he needed that financial help.

The wonderful thing about Lee is he is poet,

and he won't like this, either, but it's true,

poet and commerce united, because he's very practical.

So he understands you can express whatever you want on the runway,

but you have to have something beautiful on the hanger

to sell to a store.

[Chai-Hyde] Gucci Group was smart.

They saw what the potential was,

and they offered McQueen a deal he thought he couldn't refuse,

which was, "Here, we'll underwrite your company

and give you 50% of the ownership."

They had secret meetings so that none of this

would get back to Arnault and the LVMH people,

and they had no idea it was coming until it hit them.

I was quite adamant when I talked to Tom that this was a one-man band.

So they leave you alone to design what you want.

Hundred percent.

I was looking for major investment...

and then Gucci got in touch, and...

the rest is history.

[laughter]

[McQueen] Au revoir, Givenchy.

[uplifting music playing]

[music stops]

[Isabella] Dodo.

[indistinct chatter]

[dogs growl]

[Detmar] What's he doing?

[McQueen] I have an affinity with the sea.

I don't know. Maybe 'cause I'm Pisces.

And when it rains and it snows,

and you're near the sea, and you can hear the waves.

It's very melancholic, but it's very romantic.

Sometimes you need to have a break

to get away from everything and not to think about

sort of, like, business and fashion shows

and to take time out.

I have to be surrounded by nature.

This is older than the house.

This is over 400 years old.

It's an elm tree,

and we uplight it at night.

And it's, like, it's good inspiration.

All my friends come here, and we have the fire on,

and we watch DVDs and listen to music,

and it's nice and relaxing.

He would be spending time with my mum a lot down the cottage.

[Janet] I'm grateful that we had that time together.

We seen more of each other. We did things together.

[McQueen] My family keep me grounded.

Fashion can be a very superficial business.

Where I started in London, there was nothing like this.

It's as close as we can get to haute couture in England, you know.

All the people here are students,

and it's like training them up and giving them

their initial step into the world of fashion.

Lee knew from when I was a little boy

that I loved to draw, and I was always very artistic.

A lot of time had passed, and I was working at a rubbish tip [laughs]

and Lee had the position for a textile designer on menswear,

and that's when he took me on.

Lee was really happy having me there,

firstly, on the creative level,

but secondly, just having something

that reminded him of his past and his childhood.

Does that look right?

[McQueen] There was a period when it wasn't so good,

and I had a lot of angst, and it was kind of hard.

There was a lot of confliction in my head

with doing the job I didn't particularly want to do, which was Givenchy.

But I think I've come to a stage where I just accept this is my life.

This is what I was born to do.

[mumbles and laughs]

[Gary] He controlled the vibe wherever he went.

A lot of the time, he was such a buzz to be around.

Way I kind of put it is like he was the queen bee

with the worker bees responding to the signals

from that queen bee, and people felt that,

you know, he had this kind of childish way

of sort of mucking about in the studio environment,

and it just made things so light and such a nice place to be.

There was always something creative happening.

That's what excited everybody.

[McQueen] I speak so loudly in my work itself.

I think everything I do is personal.

Even turning Kate Moss into a hologram is kind of personal. It's ethereal.

It's a time I'm feeling at one with the world and heavenly.

If you want to know me, just look at my work.

[applause]

[somber music playing]

[reporter] What does fashion mean to you?

My life.

[Detmar] Issie died proud.

She died having achieved beyond her wildest dreams.

[Sykes] The fact that Issie went was a huge blow to so many people,

including Alexander, huge blow.

[bell tolls]

[Detmar] I saw him at Issie's funeral, and I've never seen anyone so devastated.

Couldn't recognize. He was--

He sat right behind me, but I turned round,

this person in a Highland... kilt

and the hat and looking very...

I thought, "My God, it's McQueen, Alexander."

And the look on his face was haunting.

I felt for him.

Could just-- you could just see the pain... he suffered.

I could see the love. Never deny the love.

It was such a love affair between those two.

Issie seemed to slot in between a sister and a mum.

And she was in the middle,

and Lee just loved Issie.

[Detmar] The connection between Issie and McQueen,

they both carried sadnesses.

Alexander had been abused.

He felt that person had destroyed his innocence.

Issie had this very sad instance when she was about five years old,

when her brother she was playing with died,

not Issie's fault, but she always felt responsible for him

and carried that guilt.

There was a destructive side and destructive issues

which she could never resolve entirely, and they would blow up...

which became more and more serious.

[Isabella] I don't take drugs but I take medication.

Sometimes I have to take a pill just to keep me calm.

The pathway to her self-destruction was clear.

Issie perhaps was thinking she didn't want to go on forever.

She couldn't reinvent herself as an old woman

'cause fashion's all about youth.

Discovering people is a big thing.

It's like being a mother, and the milk's dried up.

[Detmar] Issie was planning her death.

So she wanted to say goodbye to McQueen...

and she organized a weekend.

She gone to a lot of trouble with a very lovely menu.

Alexander was exhausted,

and he turned up and just stayed in his room.

Whatever she needed, he wasn't able to give it himself.

But they did see each other.

Yeah. There was a farewell between them.

Big hug and kiss and "See you in the next world."

The thing is, when you're ill,

you don't know-- you're very alone.

[Detmar] Issie had cancer at the end, ovarian cancer.

It was terminal. Who knows? Issie wouldn't have been interested in chemotherapy.

The last thing Issie said to me,

"Do you remember, Detmar, when I was a ray of sunshine?"

And I said, "Issie, you'll always be a ray of sunshine."

McQueen is calling his show La Dame Bleue.

He's dedicating this show

to his late, great friend and mentor, Isabella Blow.

You could see her in the clothes.

You could smell the perfume of her around,

and you could see her children, in a way.

And backstage, Alexander and Philip going crazy together.

What bonded them was Issie.

Isabella single-handedly invented Alexander and myself

from nowhere with such conviction

that we will never experience again.

Her belief in you

made you be the person you were.

[thump of wings flapping]

[tender music playing]

[Hillson] Once you sat down and you saw the set and the music...

you were there, and it held you,

because I kept seeing her in the clothes he was putting on the catwalk,

and the hats, of course, that Philip was designing.

[Viglezio] It was actually creating some mythical figure

that was like Issie's presence at the show.

So emotional. Just couldn't stop crying.

Was bent over double,

and... grief is grief.

You have to go through it.

[woman] Then to see them come on and realize how young they were,

and they'd lost a great friend,

and how they had loved her.

[Janet] I think it had a big effect on Lee.

After Issie passed away,

he was in a really dark place.

[Pons] We were watching TV in the evening,

and Lee McQueen opened the news that day

with the Horn of Plenty show.

And my father was sitting there,

and he's like, "Sebastian, come over.

I think it's your crazy friend's fashion on TV."

And when my father saw the collection and is like...

"I think your friend has gone really mad."

[applause]

And I think with the Horn of Plenty,

that really reflects the fashion world today...

A pile of crap.

Three years of being apart,

I think a lot, and I think he think a lot, also.

When I call him,

it was like, "Hello, Lee?"

"Hello?" It's, like,

"Lee, it's Sebastian."

"Where the fuck have you been all this time,

you fucking bastard?"

We just started again

like the brothers we were before.

So then I took the ferry to Ibiza,

and I went to his villa.

When he opened the door, I was in shock,

because the person who opened the door,

he was a different person.

He was really skinny and looking very fragile

and very, very pale.

When I hug him,

that's when I notice something has changed,

because his body structure was just bones.

There was hardly any muscle or flesh there.

[Gary] Lee come in with the idea of having an invitation for a show

that had that metamorphosis.

He wanted his face to transform into a skull.

Everything in his life had just led to these feelings of torment.

Lee was HIV-positive.

Even though it isn't a death sentence, as such...

I think it was always in the back of Lee's mind.

You'd feel the bad vibes when Lee was down, you know?

There was a real depression that was brought with that as well.

[violin music playing]

[Janet] I think the trouble is with Lee,

after a show, when you've done that build-up

and you've worked hard, and you could see

there was a little bit of a down.

And then on to the next show again.

Yeah, it was show after... I don't know how Lee did it.

[applause]

[McQueen] The pressure's kind of quite immense now

because of the Gucci contract, and...

You know, I do the men's now, and now I also do McQ,

so it's about 14 collections a year again,

same as when I was at Givenchy, so it's hard work.

[Gary] I think he would have liked the idea of moving away

and just leaving everything behind,

but as it is his name above the door

and his reputation as a person and everything he had built,

he couldn't just abandon it.

[McQueen] If I ever get that old and I'm still around

and I leave my company, I'll just burn the place down.

[man] Yeah. No one'll work there. [laughs]

[reporter] Really? So you'd never let someone carry on...

the McQueen tradition or the McQueen brand

if you weren't actively involved?

I don't think so.

I mean... It doesn't--

because that person will have to come up with the concepts for my show,

and my shows are so personal, how can that be?

[Janet] I said, "Why don't you step away, Lee, for a year?

And he just said, "You don't understand."

He said, "I'm responsible for 50 people.

They've got to pay their mortgage. I can't just stop."

[Viglezio] I was always thinking,

"There's so much sadness in him,"

and that was sad,

because he was this successful, flamboyant being

who actually was so lonely deep inside.

It can be really lonely,

and I think, you know, I'd...

I think there's more to life than fashion,

and I don't want to be stuck in that bubble

of this is what I do,

because it's nice, because you see everyone in the office,

they go home, and they can shut off,

but I'm still Alexander McQueen after I shut the door.

You know what I mean? I've got to go home with myself.

If you've had a bad day,

I've only got myself to answer to, so...

[both laugh]

[violin music continues]

I mean, with us, it was like

behaving all right, okay,

but deep inside, we knew that he wasn't...

he wasn't hundred percent.

He could hear voices.

He was telling me that they were chasing him.

One thing he used to say,

"Paranoia will destroy ya."

[Bennett] I remember doing a drawing,

which is basically it's got lots of cameras around,

then we're thinking, "Maybe the cameras could be on robots."

It was always about getting the camera right in your face.

It's surveillance. It's making the audience uncomfortable.

[Gary] The idea behind Plato's Atlantis

is where people come from the land and go back into the sea.

[Gary] He loved swimming, scuba diving.

He loved that feeling

of just being in a different world underwater.

You know, just away from everything,

almost like you're back in the womb floating,

you know? And that kind of serenity you would get through that.

[Pons] Plato's Atlantis was kind of like a study in his head

with all the digital printing and all the experimenting,

pattern cutting, and the robots were there again.

He said to me, "I design my last collection, Sebastian,"

and he told me, "I had enough with all this.

I gonna kill myself."

"What do you mean, you're gonna kill yourself?"

He's like, "Yeah." He's like, "I am fed up.

I had it with this. I just want to put this an end.

And in my last show, in the end,"

he said, "Do you remember Voss?

So I'm gonna do the sort of same thing, but it's gonna be a Perspex box,

the size of a human being, so when the show ends,

this box is gonna come out from the ground...

with me inside,

and then I'm just gonna shoot myself."

And...

[stammering] And I just didn't know

how to react to that, you know what I mean,

because... he sounded so convincing.

It was like he thought that the whole fashion system

was against him.

And I said, "No, no one is against you."

"But if you are thinking to do this,

you're gonna harm so many people,

because people come to your shows

to see your beauty, your talent, your creativity,

and you-- to see you, to see your work."

[somber music playing]

He was like a movie director.

We had to be like aliens, and he told us this.

He said, "Listen, you have to have this face, strong.

You have to be powerful."

With this show, he kind of throw a bomb on us.

"Okay, this is it. Finish.

Everything is finished. We are reborn.

We're starting new-- new chapter, new plans."

[dramatic music playing]

I was really scared.

I tried to not to picture myself falling.

I wanted him to be proud of me, and I wanted him to be proud

that he has such a army of models.

Endless print designs. Might've been a fish's fin.

Scales from a snake.

Then manipulated and montaged into a repeat pattern

and become something else unrecognizable.

This was the turn of the digital age coming into fashion.

[Pons] If it was the end,

then that had to be why his best collection is there.

He knew he needed something revolutionary,

and I think Plato's Atlantis it is. I'm sorry.

[applause]

[Janet] I didn't go to Plato, my mum not being well.

She was on dialysis at the time.

Lee didn't really want to face the fact

that we was gonna lose Mum because he'd lost Issie.

He wasn't...

dealing with Mum not being well.

[somber music playing]

[Gary] After my grandmother, Joyce, had passed away...

he was in really bad shape.

[Janet] Lee was distraught.

We were sitting in the living room at my dad's...

and he didn't look hisself at all, Lee.

We was all taking my mum's passing bad,

but I think we was all worried about Lee,

because obviously, Mum and Lee...

Lee idolized my mum.

The last job he gave me to do was designing the gravestone.

He liked the idea like the wings wrapping round a gravestone

to kind of embrace my grandmother, Joyce.

Originally, I had the hands,

which were facing down on top of the gravestone...

but the hands for him, facing down,

was holding them down.

He want them uplifted, so he turned the hands upwards.

[Janet] I called Lee,

and...

we spoke about Mum's funeral,

and... and that was the last conversation.

The night, I was in bed, I was reading,

and I felt something touch my head...

very softly and very gently touch my head,

and I said to myself, "Who's here? Who are you?"

You know, I knew someone had passed and was saying goodbye.

I got a call at half past nine in the morning

from my sister,

and then that phone call...

just... changed...

everything.

I really couldn't believe what I was hearing,

because it just seemed so surreal in that moment.

Just a vision in my mind

of Lee being sort of all alone

and doing that as well was playing through my mind,

and it's quite...

it's not the nicest way to go, you know,

suicide, alone, hanging.

It's...

Don't want to think really what was going through his mind,

how lonely he must have been as well doing it.

[TV 1] The fashion world is in shock tonight

over the news that Alexander McQueen...

[TV 2] Alexander McQueen, the darling of British fashion,

has been found dead after apparent...

[TV 3] Alexander McQueen...

[overlapping TV reports in multiple languages]

[Pons] He used to say that a lot--

one day, I'm gonna come home

inside a body bag...

and that day when...

the news open again that day...

him leaving his house inside a body bag.

[Barton] I'd taken my kids to Hamleys' hundredth-year celebration,

and my partner picked me up and said,

I've got-- [tearfully] I can't do it.

Just be wast-- I just cry.

He said, "Lee's dead," and...

it was just such a shock,

and I was so angry for a really long time.

'Cause you think just, "How do you--

How did that happen?" He's...

I think that...

perhaps after my mum went

that he felt there was nothing

that could make him happy anymore.

And I just think it was in that moment that...

he had that emptiness.

I miss him a lot, yeah.

I miss that... that, you know...

he could've had some really great happiness in his life

and he didn't quite have that in his personal life,

and that's what I wish... wished for him most.

Yeah.

I'm so happy I got to... to meet him

and to...

to share part of my life

with his story, and everything.

But I miss him.

I wish...

things ended in a different way.

[piano music playing]

[Sykes] He wanted to make really beautiful things,

and he was-- sculpted in clothing.

He was a sculptor, really, I think,

and that's where that silhouette came from.

[Chai-Hyde] His clothes made me feel that you could be feminine,

but at the same time, "Don't fuck with me.

I'm a bitch."

[laughing]

[Pons] Things I remember best is seeing him working.

It was magical. For me, it was like a magician.

[Sykes] One outfit would just be insane,

and then the next one would just be genius.

[Danan] Nobody could create emotions in a show

like Lee McQueen did.

[Gary] Fashion for Lee was a way of communicating a whole world,

and he wanted to take himself out of the picture

and for people to focus on this art Lee's creating.

[Costin] Raucous, bolshie,

incredibly funny, incredibly driven.

Not only did he have a singular vision,

but he was a very singular individual,

and his strength of personality was quite phenomenal.

You don't see many people like that.

They don't come up very often.

[chamber music playing]

[chamber music stops suddenly, piano music]

[music ends]