Skip to content
News

Fashion Star Alexander McQueen Dead at 40

100211-alexander-mcqueen.jpg

Alexander McQueen, the innovative English fashion designer who dressed musicians like Lady Gaga, Bjork, Courtney Love, Karen O, and more, was found dead Thursday at his London home, the BBC reports.

Paramedics were called to his residence in the early morning, where McQueen was pronounced dead on arrival. Police are not treating his death as suspicious; rumors of the designer’s suicide have yet-to-be confirmed.

“He has passed away,” a spokeswoman for Gucci Group, which owns the designer’s fashion house, told the Wall Street Journal. “We don’t have any information in terms of circumstances.”

Sources claim McQueen was distraught after the death of his mother last week, and that of his close pal, fashion writer and icon Isabella Blow, who killed herself in 2007. Even McQueen’s final posts to his Twitter account were quite depressing, with mentions of heaven, angels, and hell. His Twitter feed has since been taken down, but his last posts are available here.

The openly gay designer was known as fashion’s bad boy, pushing the limits of artistic expression in the medium. In 1995, he released a collection titled “Highland Rape,” which represented the “rape” of Scotland by the British, and featured models with what looked like Tampon strings coming out of their ripped lace dresses. In 1998, he planned to name another show “Golden Shower,” but folded due to pressure from sponsors. [Via Gawker]

McQueen was also heavily involved in working with rock’s sexiest frontwomen. He recently teamed with the Duke Spirit for a clothing line for Target, and he partnered with stars like Courtney Love, Karen O, and Bjork — the two co-designed the techno-geisha outfit featured on the cover of her album Homogenic. McQueen also designed the wild outfit and 10-inch heels Lady Gaga wore in her video for “Bad Romance.”