The Queen is dead, long live the Queen

 
Okay, a slightly unfair title as I've never actually seen, read or heard that Alexander McQueen liked to dress in drag, but if he did, he surely would have been one of the most stylish and elegant, sumptiously gothic and alluring dragstars ever.

I've always been a fan of McQueen's, I even met him once in Hoxton on a drunken night out, and have pawed his dresses in Omotesando Hills' secret underground select shop bunker 'Loveless' - dressses priced at half a million yen each! (about £3000)

McQueen was one of those designers who you wished you had more time to explore, and now that he's dead, no doubt the revolution will truly begin, as post-humous tribute books, DVDs and gushing TV documentaries start to grace our lives; and a good thing too.

His work was a fantastic mix - as The Times said yesterday on it's leader: "Death, S&M, violence, religion were all on his catwalk"  - and how right they were, but what I didn't expect to be reading, (as if one ever expects anything from a sudden tragic loss) was the close and seemingly beautiful relationship he had with his mother.

He described himself as 'the pink sheep' of the family, which is, frankly adorable (and which I shall henceforth be using), and in an interview conducted by his mum he now famously told her when asked "What are you most scared of?" and "What makes you proud?", he answered respectively: "Dying before you" and "You". When she tried to push him on why he was proud of her, he declined to answer and insisted she move on to the next question.

In fact, she and he were so close, it appears that the devastating loss of his mother on the 2nd of February triggered his own decision to commit suicide, and again, we're left to mull over the modern state of the world in his last twitter comments:


"Been a fucking awful week but my friends have been great but now I have to somehow pull myself together and finish with the HELLS ANGELS & PROLIFIC DAEMONS!"


He was clearly a man with a lot of time for the afterlife, and killing himself on the night before his mother's funeral was for him, the most graceful, artful, tragic and beautiful exit he could make, after 20 years devoted to expression, drama, opera and fantasy, it is a fitting end to a tortured genius which fits perfectly in step with the panache with which he lived his life, as always, he has left us all wanting more.

Bravo Sir. Encore! Encore!
:)