'Conflicting Conviction - Alexander McQueen' - Dazed & Confused Issue 9 1994

Interview: Samantha Murray-Greenway
Photography: Rankin
Styling: Katie Grand 
Hair and Make Up: Vanessa Evelyn at Streeters, N.Y.C.
Model: Angelica Boss at Company Management. 

Special thanks to Pam and Derek at In the Mix Alexander McQueen's Autumn Winter 1994 Collection is available from Pellicano, 63 South Molton Street, W1.

Designer Alexander McQueen is a paradox. He comes from the East End but has been fostered by the monied and the aristocratic. He is genuinely camera-shy but is no shrinking violet. He describes his collection as 'in your face'; attention seeking but discreetly tailored, his clothes are meticulously constructed. His studio, a space lent to him by his mentor, stylist Isabelia Blow, lies plaster-bare and deranged in the heart of Belgravia.

"Go on, ask me a personal question," Alexander McQueen urges. Right from the start he has made it clear. McQueen isn't bored by fashion, but it's not the most pressing thing either. Poverty, the economy, the homeless; McQueen is aware and he is vocal. He doesn't fall silent in the fashion arena either: McQueen regards the unsupportive British fashion industry with dis-dain; "London gives me fuck all. If they offered me Young Designer of the Year I'd throw a right tantrum - they haven't given me shit." He has recently acquired a backer and his collection has taken off in New York where it received immediate attention from press and buyers. He sighs almost imperceptibly, but admits slightly proud, his New York image is exactly the same as over here - 'East End lout'. East End he may be - lout he is not.

Dazed & Confused: How will your work differ now that you have a backer?

Alexander McQueen: This collection is more ready to wear. The collections I've done before have been really craft-worky, made as you go along, like bespoke tailoring. But these manufacturers haven't got time to sit at a dummy and start adjusting. It's difficult though, it's the way I work. I'm supposed to be doing concept work for jil Sander but I can't because the things I do are technical, shapes on a dummy. It's like these frock coats cut in a 16th century method based on architecture, on a horizon point, so you get a flat surface that swings away. I mean I was a technologist before I was a designer and a constructionist before I was a technologist. That's the way I work, it's like a jigsaw puzzle. I think I might go back to the old way - do the garments first on the stand and get a sketcher in to draw them. It's hard like that.

D&C: Where will you be based?

AM: My backer wants me to stay in London, he doesn't want me to move to Paris. I'm planning showrooms for Milan and Paris, but I'm in London to show; I like the people, the way the kids go to the shows, there's the atmosphere. The people in Paris who go to the shows are just snotty, they don't enjoy it for the show, they go because they think it's the right place to be.

D&C: What made you take your collection New York?

AM: Through Dazed & Confused, Derek Anderson tracked me down and asked if I wanted to go on his books for free, he was already representing Margiela. New York was planned before London, we didn't even know if there was going to be a London show and there was no way I was going to Paris. I'd just be swallowed up. Since the last show I've had more press in New York than I've ever had over here. The garments on this shoot are the more sellable ones - all the others were out on loan.

D&C: How is it going in London comparatively?

AM: It's still going well and I've been good at marketing myself. I don't go out hunting for accounts anymore, it's too much trouble. I stick with Pellicano because they've been good to me. The reason I'm in London is because I know it. If I want a certain type of lighting for a show, know where to get it. If I want a particular model, I know where to find her or if I want a certain DJ or cloth or something... If I was in Paris I wouldn't know the backdoor from my

D&C: What's your ideal vision of beauty?

AM: It's quite disturbing... unconventional. I like lesbians a lot. I've started going to this lesbian club and it's really good to see women in the company of other women. There's no men about, except maybe a few gay men. It's so nice to see women without worries.

D&C: Does no men equal no worries?

AM: Oh yeah. It makes them feel at ease and you see things you wouldn't see in the street - not just two women kissing. It's the way they act, they ain't got a care in the world. It's like every sort of woman in the world was at this club; some really feminine, really sexy women and really strong, butch women. Some were acting real straight, like some gay men act straight, like me and Jimmy, we're not queeny. I think that's what I design for. I don't say that I only design for lesbians, but if anyone's going to tell me something's wrong in my collection, a wrong image, something obtuse, it's going to be a lesbian. I've gone to extremes to look for a woman's point of view and you can't get more extreme than a hardened feminist. I'm afraid the stuff I do is nothing to entice men I want it to be me, not another woman so Bitch keep your hands off my man! But no, you know what I mean. Most of my clothes are sexy, proportion-wise, they're body conscious. It's just that men don't come into the picture when I'm designing - not at all.

D&C: What do you think about the Elle's 'Welcome To The Nihilism' 90s' piece? They used an image from your catwalk show and an image from D&C to pinpoint youth's lack of direction...

AM: That is what the '90s is about. Everyone's got a different point of view. But it's like the new Face, I was looking at it today. They are trying to categorise the '90s as something ultra-violent, ultra-this, ultra-that... It's really disturbing and kind of sickening because they're forgetting everyone's identity. What the '90s began at, what I hopefully had something to do with in the last few seasons, was designers and their individual talents. Everyone's got their own style, the press just want to label it. But it's like don't start giving people this bullshit because they won't take it these days. We've got no time for stars anymore, there are too many problems and not enough money to go round. This nihilism - it's just people going their own way and the writer of that article has just categorised it himself - he's saying there's nothing going on but by saying that he's making it into something anyway.

D&C: So what's the next step?

AM: I feel pressured by the press to beat the competition whereas what I've always done is go my own route. I don't want the press or anyone making me into something I'm not. Someone said John Galliano only does clothes for press, but that's what the press made him and now they're knocking him for it. I can see myself going that way as well if I don't take control - because my shows have been getting so much press, because they're so different from what's been going on... But I want to see people wearing my clothes, not just a handful of fashion editors. 

D&C: Is it daunting being on this threshold - you have the notoriety now and it's up to you which direction you take?

AM: Well it's kind of scary - I'm coming face to face with it. I mean look at this; they made Nadja Auermann a star. They said the Year of the Supermodel was over and now they're calling her the Super Nova - I mean for fucks sake, she's just a commodity like everything else.

D&C: Do you ever see yourself doing things other than fashion?

AM: Oh yeah. There are too many important things in my life, like jim. I took a lot of time out of this collection to work on my relationship with him because my life is important as well as my work, I wasn't born to work. I'd have been born a computor or something. I'd really love to sit down for a week and just tailor one beautiful jacket but I know I can't 'cause I don't have the time - within one week I do five jackets. I've got a feeling I might become a recluse one day.

D&C: So where would you go?

AM: I've always wanted to go to Spain, to some desolate place where there are no clocks. Everything in my life at the moment is run by time. All I have in my mind now is the 9th October, the day of the show, and it's doing my head in. It's getting to the point where I'm not doing it because I enjoy it but because it's what's expected. I've got a feeling I could lose grip altogether, but that's why I work on my relationship with Jim because hopefully he's there to bring me out of that.

D&C: Would you ever move to New York?

AM: Never. I hated it. It's such an air-brained city. The money system, their class system, it's so blatant: power by wealth. There's the homeless and there's the rich, there's no in between. Money buys everything. Money buys you stature.

D&C: So for you success isn't about money?

AM: Not at all. I mean I could have raked it in doing the Jean Colonna thing, overlocking everything or doing deconstruction but my life's never been about deconstruction. I started work as a constructionist, a tailor, so there was scope for me to earn loads of money but I'm more sensible than that - I would have been put out of business straight after. But Margiela, his work is pure sincerity, so he can move on. He's not the hippest person to know because everyone thinks he's a bit passe, but to me he's still the biggest thing, for one thing he could do deconstruction because he knew construction. I don't want to lose my conviction. I don't want to be governed by the strength of the new material. I don't want to have to tell people that I used that plastic stuff that Helmut Lang used in his show, before him. I get worried... I don't like people not understanding that I'm evolving as quickly as everyone else. I am a technologist, 1 did rust clothes before everyone else... I know i'll come up with the ideas first but then I know that next season someone else will use it and get the recognition.

D&C: So what's your idea of success?

AM: Being happy, stable... If there's one thing I'd like to get rid of it'd be time; the world is governed by it. It's another commodity. That's why I'd like to live in Spain by the sea. I went to Brighton the other day, it was a really gloomy day and I stood in front of the sea. Did you see that conservation thing on dolphins with Cary Franklin? She was crying on camera. They took her on a boat in the North Sea and these dolphins started swimming beside and she just burst out crying, saying 'I wish I wasn't human, I don't want to be here right now, I want to be under the water with these dolphins'. It makes me feel quite emotional, because I really think this business is sick. It's like Rawanda - now l don't think about it. But I mean what the fuck are you talking about, you've got no water for these people? Why don't they send Perrier over there? There's fucking water everywhere. It's all about money. All they sent over was dry rice. Jean Paul Getty could do it five times over, stick a water tank in. That's why I sometimes look at this and think what am I doing. I mean they've even made the ecology into an economic thing - like The Body Shop - it's just another way to sell things. 

Anyway I think I lost it a bit there. I spoke to my mum this morning and she said "Don't say anything you shouldn't say". I had this Telegraph interview and it came out as me being gay and she said "Why do you have to publicise your private life?" But it's not my private life, it's just the way I am. But this is the last interview I'm doing, I don't want it no more. I'm not being poncey, but I feel my life is going fast and I want to take control - if they want to do anything on me they can concentrate on the clothes. It's like Vogue writing that I changed my name to Alexander McQueen because it was more dashing - I'm sorry but my name has always been Lee Alexander McQueen, it's never been no different. It's like the way they played on the shag pile carpet bit at my sisters flat in Chadwell Heath, the Alf Garnett slippers. I mean come on, get with it - I'm sorry but I'm just a normal person, l haven't got some Colgate smile, but I tell you, I've got fucking bad toothache.