Timeline 1969
Lee Alexander McQueen, the youngest of six children was born in the East End of London to Joyce and Ronald McQueen. His father was a taxi driver; his mother was a social science teacher.
1985
At 16, McQueen left school. Later he found an apprenticeship on Savile Row working for the tailors Anderson & Sheppard.
1987 Moved to Gieves & Hawkes. By the time he was 21, McQueen had also worked for Angels & Bermans, the theatrical costume company, and for the London based Japanese designer Koji Tatsuno. 1990 Moved to Milan. Started to work as a pattern cutter for Italian designer Romeo Gigli. 1994 Earned a master’s degree at the Central St. Martins in London, where his graduate collection caught the attention of Ms. Blow. She acquired every peiece of that collection and took McQueen under her wing.
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BIOGRAPHY Born Lee McQueen in the East End of London in 1969, Alexander McQueen was the youngest of six children to a taxi driver and a social history teacher. He left school at the age of sixteen and started an apprenticeship with the Savile Row tailors Anderson and Sheppard. From there McQueen moved to the tailors Gieves and Hawkes, the theatrical costumers Bermans and Nathans, the designer Koji Tatsuno in London, and (at age twenty) to Romeo Gigli in Milan. Returning to London in 1990, he sought employment teaching pattern-cutting at Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design; instead, despite his lack of formal fashion training, he was offered a place in the fashion design course as a graduate student. He was awarded the master of arts degree in 1992. After leaving college, McQueen claimed unemployed social security benefits and feared criminal prosecution if caught working for money. He then began designing under the name of Alexander McQueen, continuing to claim benefits as Lee McQueen. His graduate collection was bought in its entirety by the influential stylist Isabella Blow, at that time a Vogue fashion editor, who went on to promote and encourage his work over several years. “He takes ideas from the past and sabotages them with his cut to make them thoroughly new and in the context of today.… He is like a Peeping Tom in the way he slits and stabs at fabric to explore all the erogenous zones of the body.” Isabella Blow, quoted in Sarajane Hoare, “God Save McQueen.” As Alexander McQueen he immediately started his own label, first showing in Autumn-Winter 1993. His early collections, such as Nihilism (Spring-Summer 1994) and Highland Rape (Autumn-Winter 1995) relied on shock tactics rather than wearability, a strategy that helped him