Alexander McQueen: From 'pink sheep' to top dog

By Michelle Olley, friend and fomer collaborator

I first met Lee when we were guests at a very different kind of event from the breathtaking McQueen couture spectacles now passed into fashion legend.

Back in 1994, Fiona Cartledge's seminal 90s street-and-clubwear emporium, Sign of the Times, was creating legends of its own, with a string of flamboyantly-themed fashion and rave mash-up club nights in London.

I met Lee at their Superheroes event at Brixton Academy. He was there with designer Andrew Groves, whose Jimmy Jumble label was stocked at Cartledge's Covent Garden store.

I remember thinking how sweet and unassuming the boy in the ancient grey sweatshirt and battered builder's jeans was. I also remember That Laugh. Right from the get go: rapid-fire gunshot delight in pure mischief.

After that, our paths crossed many times, in various London demi-mondes – I was a writer/editor/club promoter/singer during the 90s, so we had friends in common around the Soho fashion-and-nightlife axis.

It wasn't until September 2000 that I worked with 'the' Alexander McQueen – fashion master. Sign of the Times alumni Sidonie Barton had by this time become Lee's right-hand woman.

When he needed a game, plus-size model to recreate Joel Peter Witkin’s Sanitarium image for the centrepiece of his spring/summer 2001 womenswear show, Voss, she called me.

Witkin's work uses carnival folk, octogenarians, cadavers and taxidermy to recreate classic paintings and religious iconography. Santarium features a naked, obese woman on a chaise longue, in an animalistic, bewinged hood, connected to some tubes that lead to the mouth of a stuffed monkey.

"Firstly, you won’t be entirely naked..." said McQueen. True. I was to be covered in giant moths – living and dead ones.

"You’ll be inside an opaque glass box, in a hood, with breathing tubes, and at the end of the show the sides will come crashing down, the glass will smash and all the moths will fly into the audience."

My mind reeled at all this, but I already knew, as he continued to reassure me about the nudity (the least of my concerns, frankly) that I was going to say yes, precisely because it was deliriously scary. I agreed to do it on the following caveat: "I just want you to know... I’m doing it for Art."

McQueen rose from the coffee table to attend to the business of getting ready for the show in ten days time, saying: "I thought we all were."

We got on great from that moment on. There is much written about the difference between McQueen the fashion legend and 'Lee' the proper London lad. I was fortunate to see both sides.

When he was working on the show, the focus was immense – the attention to detail was applied to every aspect – from the always-confrontational higher concept right down to the 'bird droppings' painted on my rubber-cement-moulded headpiece.

He had high standards for creative people. He once lambasted me at a magazine launch party for taking a staff job on the title, saying I should be concentrating on my 'real' writing. He still turned up to support it, though.

He wasn't comfortable with being lauded in public/social situations, but that didn’t stop him from going anywhere he wanted to, often dressed down/incognito.

One of my fondest memories of him is spending a Halloween evening at Simon Drake's House of Magic – an otherworldly, down-the-rabbit-hole cabaret venue, where everything and everyone is... well, magical.

That laugh - as he delighted in the phantasmagorical-ness of it all. McQueen was never happier than when surrounded by mischief and spectacle.