Fashion is D.E.A.D

Today 2years ago the fashion world came to a stand still with the shocking news of the death of the genius of the fashion industry Lee Alexander Mcqueen, he committed suicide in 2010 shortly after the death of his mother.

Alexander McQueen was born on March 17, 1969, in Lewisham, London into a working class family living in public housing. His father, Ronald was a cab driver and his mother Joyce taught social science. Mcqueen was one of five siblings. He became head designer of the Louis Vuitton -owned Givenchy fashion line and in 2004 launched his own menswear line. He earned the British Fashion Council's, British Designer of the Year award four times, and was named Commander of the Order of the British Empire.

At age of 16, McQueen dropped out of school. He found work on Savile Row, a street in London's Mayfair district famous for offering made-to-order men's suits. He worked first with the tailor shop Anderson and Shephard, and then moved to nearby Gieves and Hawkes.

McQueen decided to further his career and moved on from Savile Row and started  working with theatrical costume designers Angels and Bermans. The dramatic style of the clothing he made there would become a signature of his later independent design work. McQueen then left London for a short stint in Milan, where he worked as a design assistant to Italian fashion designer Romeo Gigli. Upon his return to London, he enrolled at Central Saint Martin's College of Art & Design, and received his M.A. in fashion design in 1992. The collection he produced for the project of his degree was inspired byJack the Ripper and was famously bought completely by the well-known London stylist and eccentric Isabella Blow. She became a long-time friend of McQueen, as well as an advocate for his work.

Mcqueen - Isabella Blow Collection

Soon after obtaining his degree, Alexander McQueen started his own business designing clothes for women. He met enormous success with the introduction of his "bumster" pants, so named because of their extremely low-cut waistline. Only four years out of design school, McQueen was named Chief Designer of Louis Vuitton-owned Givenchy, a French haute couture fashion house.  Even as he was pushing the limits of what people expected from fashion (one of his shows featured a model who was an amputee walking the runway on carved wooden legs), McQueen felt he was being held back. He would later say that the job constrained his creativity, however he also made the following admission: "I treated Givenchy badly. It was just money to me. But there was nothing I could do: the only way it would have worked would have been if they had allowed me to change the whole concept of the house, to give it a new identity, and they never wanted me to do that." Even with his reservations about his work, McQueen won British Designer of the year in 1996, 1997, and 2001, all during his time at Givenchy.

McQueen for Gucci

In 2000, Gucci bought a 51 percent stake in Alexander McQueen's company and provided the capital for McQueen to expand his business. McQueen left Givenchy shortly thereafter. In 2003 he was declared International Designer of the Year by the Council of Fashion, Designers of America and A Most Excellent Commander of the British Empire by the Queen of England and won yet another British Designer of the Year award. Meanwhile he opened stores in New York, Milan, London, Las Vegas and Los Angeles. With the help of Gucci's investment, McQueen had become even more successful than he was ever before. Already known for the flair and passion of his shows, McQueen produced even more interesting spectacles after leaving Givenchy. For example, a hologram of model Kate Moss at the showing of his 2006 Fall/Winter line.

Alexander McQueen was also known for not being shy about his lack of traditional good looks or his lower class background. One acquaintance described that during a first

encounter, McQueen was wearing a lumberjack shirt with the most low-class kind of jeans with a long key chain...Another friend said that his teeth looked like Stonehenge.  According to those who knew him closely, McQueen was proud of breaking the traditional mold of a successful designer.

In 2007, death would come to haunt McQueen  first with the suicide of Isabella Blow. The designer dedicated his 2008 Spring/Summer line to Blow and said that her death "was the most valuable thing I learnt in fashion." Just two years later, on February 2, 2010, McQueen's mother died. One day before her funeral, on February 11, 2010, McQueen was found dead in his Mayfair, London apartment. The cause of death was determined to be suicide.

Alexander McQueen's rise from lower-class high school dropout to internationally famous designer is a remarkable story. His bold styles and fascinating shows inspired and wowed the world of fashion, and his legacy lives on. Longtime co-designer Sarah Burton took over the still-operating Alexander McQueen brand,and McQueen's contribution to fashion was honored by a 2011 exhibition of his creations at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.