Alexander McQueen

by Andrew Wilson

  He returned to London to find that his mother’s health had worsened. ‘We all called Lee in the days before Mum passed away to tell him how bad she was and that he should come to see her,’ said Janet. ‘But he didn’t want to come to the hospital. He was really struggling as he knew in his heart that these were probably Mum’s final days.’88 The doctors had wanted Joyce to stay in hospital over Christmas 2009, but Joyce had other ideas. She loved a family Christmas and on 25 December she had got herself dressed and ready to leave. ‘The doctors refused and she was doing her nut,’ said Michael McQueen. ‘That was the only time I ever heard her effing and blinding, when she was sitting on the edge of the bed, complaining that the doctors wouldn’t let her go home. That was the first time she had had a go at Lee, saying to him, “You can eff off and all.” I went to see the doctors and they let her come home on condition that we brought her back after four hours. That was the happiest she had looked for ages.’89

  Joyce had prepared herself for death some time before and had written an extended letter in a notebook in which she listed certain possessions that she wished to bequeath to her children. She wanted Lee to have a Tiffany glass plate that he had bought for her; two Victorian paintings; six Spode plates that he had given her and two vegetable tureens. She also left him her first edition of The Phillimore Atlas and Index of Parish Registers and a first edition of a history of West Kingsdown, which listed some names of her Deane ancestors. Lastly, she gave him her collection of Jasperware by Wedgwood. She outlined that she wanted to be buried – not cremated – in Manor Park Cemetery and that she wished to be dressed in a high-necked nightdress, either in pink or white, which were the colours Ron liked on her. She wanted a spray of white lilies or roses on the coffin, but she did not want her children to pay for expensive wreaths, particularly not ones that read ‘Mum’ or ‘Nan’. ‘I have always thought I was one of the most luckiest mothers in the world to have such wonderful children,’ she wrote in the first few pages of the notebook. ‘I loved each and every one of you so much that sometimes I thought my heart would burst with happiness and pride. At the same time when things did not go right for you or you suffered in some way, I also felt your grief or despair and just wished I could wave a magic wand to put things right for everyone.’ She wrote of the love she still felt for Ron and outlined how she believed that she had gained strength of character and a sense of determination from him. They had had their troubles just like any other married couple, she said, but their strong love and devotion had always meant that they had managed to survive difficult times. ‘So I do not want any of you to grieve for me,’ she wrote. ‘Since my marriage I have had a wonderful life and was blessed with many happy memories. You have all given me so much love and happiness in my life, perhaps more than I deserve.’ She said that she had always tried to be a good mother, and that she wanted to tell all six of her children, together with her grandchildren, how much she loved them. ‘I wish you all peace and contentment for the rest of your lives, be happy, God Bless you All. Love as Always Mum,’ followed by six kisses.90

  On 1 February, Lee turned up at a dinner hosted by Vanity Fair’s Graydon Carter in honour of Tom Ford, at Harry’s Bar in Mayfair. He had previously turned down the invitation to celebrate the launch of Ford’s film A Single Man and so the organizers were a little surprised to see him when he arrived unannounced with Annabelle Neilson. Tom Ford had a drink with McQueen at the bar and then returned to join his husband Richard Buckley and guests that included Valentino, Jay Jopling, Nicky Haslam, Colin Firth, Thandie Newton and Guy Ritchie, at the seated dinner. Later, Richard Buckley told the photographer Dafydd Jones, who took a series of images of the event for Vanity Fair, that he and Tom ‘thought Alexander had come to say goodbye’.91

  That same night, McQueen’s family gathered around the hospital bed of Joyce, who was dying. The family did not know how much time she had left, and by eleven or twelve o’clock at night both Michael and Ron needed to return to their homes to take medication for their conditions. Janet volunteered to drive them back to get their tablets, leaving Tony alone with his mother. ‘So they’ve been gone for half an hour – it was about half past twelve at this point – and my mum started screaming,’ he said. ‘It was obvious she was in pain. I told them that they had best give her something because she was in real pain. And the nurse gave her some more morphine and she passed away in my arms.’ When Lee heard the news he was devastated; not only by the loss of his mother, but also by the prospect of what he knew he had to do.

  The days that followed Joyce’s death – on 2 February in Queen’s Hospital, Romford, aged seventy-five – passed in something of a daze for the family, but Tony remembers Lee coming to their parents’ house in Rowan Walk. ‘Lee was sitting on the settee and his head was down and he was obviously really upset,’ he said. Tony said to him, ‘It’s all right, Lee.’ In response, Lee muttered, ‘Yeah.’ ‘And that was it – he said nothing to no one,’ said Tony. ‘He went away and I think the next day I got a phone call from him. He wanted to know what Mum had said [before she died]. And I said, “She said she loves you and you’re not to go and kill yourself now.” And then I didn’t hear from him again.’92 A few days later, Jacqui recalls taking hold of her brother and cradling him in her arms and kissing him all over and telling him that she loved him. ‘He was lost,’ she said. ‘I was shocked that he allowed me to touch him, because he didn’t know how to deal with being tactile. As he was leaving with his PA he stood at the doorway and gestured for me. I thought that’s not like Lee because normally he says ‘Bye’ and then he’s gone. But I melted in his arms and he melted in my arms. He was like a child then.’93

  On 3 February, via his Twitter account, McQueen wrote, ‘I’m letting my followers know my mother passed away yesterday if she had not me nor would you RIPmumxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx . . .’ A few moments later, he added, ‘But life must go on!!!!!!!!!!!!!!’ On Sunday 7 February, he wrote, ‘been a fucking awful week but my friends have been great but now i have to some how pull myself together and finish with the HELLS ANGELS & PROLIFIC DAEMONS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!,’ a reference to his latest collection. This was inspired by early Netherlandish artists such as Hans Memling, Hugo van der Goes and Hieronymus Bosch, Byzantine imagery, Grinling Gibbons and Jean Fouquet, whose Virgin and Child Surrounded by Angels Lee had used as a reference in Joan. However, McQueen could not face the thought of work and locked himself in his flat.

  ‘A few days before he died he called me and I could tell that he had been taking drink and drugs,’ said Archie Reed. ‘“My dog has been diagnosed with cancer and I have to make a choice about whether to put her to sleep.”’ Archie felt annoyed by what he saw as Lee’s self-centred attitude and, during the conversation, called him a ‘selfish cunt’. ‘I’ve got my own problems to deal with, go and take a fucking sleeping pill,’ he told him. ‘I’ll come around tomorrow, I’ll cook dinner and we’ll sort this out properly.’ He never heard from Lee again.94

  Using small, subtle gestures, McQueen started to say his goodbyes. On 8 February, he spoke to his nephew, Gary James McQueen, and asked him to create a gravestone for his mother that incorporated the design of an angel. ‘He said he wanted it to be uplifting,’ Gary said.95 Then Lee phoned Janet and told her that he loved her. He gave Annabelle Neilson his wallet, explaining that he needed a new one, and a photograph of him with one of his dogs. On 9 February, at seven in the morning, he sent a tweet to Kerry Youmans, in a spirit of fun: ‘I’m here with my girl annie tinkerbell [Annabelle Neilson] wishing kerry the slag, happy birthday in NY, your [sic] 40 now girl time to slow it down we think.’96 The same day, he managed to drag himself into work, where he spoke to Trino Verkade about his mother’s funeral. ‘Make it late,’ he had said, when Trino had asked him about the time he wanted a table at J. Sheekey’s restaurant on the night of the funeral.97 He also spoke to Janet again, telling her that he was going to make his mother an old-fashioned pink winceyette nightgown, which he would then
have biked to the funeral home. He wrote a handwritten note to Kerry which said, ‘I want to thank you for always being a good friend to me. Love, Lee,’ which he sent by Fed-Ex and which arrived in New York soon after the news of McQueen’s death had broken.98

  On 10 February Lee had dinner at Scott’s with some members of his studio – ‘apparently he was very together at dinner,’ said Daphne Guinness99 – and then he and Annabelle Neilson returned to his flat in Green Street. Lee had always promised Annabelle that he would never follow Isabella’s suicide, ‘but who will ever know what was going on in his mind, what he was dealing with?’ she wondered. Lee knew he could not bear to attend the funeral of his mother, which had been scheduled for 12 February. His much-loved dog Minter had been diagnosed with cancer. Death for him seemed like an escape, a blessed relief, a step towards the kind of thought-free existence that he had craved for so long. ‘I wonder now if things would have been different if I hadn’t left that night, but a part of me knows that there is nothing anyone could have done to change anything,’ said Annabelle.100

  In the early hours, and in a desperate state of mind, Lee took hold of a book, Wolfe von Lenkiewicz’s The Descent of Man, and on the back cover wrote the words, ‘Please look after my dogs. Sorry, I love you, Lee. PS Bury me at the church.’ He then started to use the internet to research suicide methods. He tapped into the search engine Yahoo, ‘When someone slits their wrist how long does it take for them to die?’ He would have read answers such as, ‘that’s a carzy [sic] *** question but I’ve heard it takes 4 to 5 hours’, ‘THIS IS A VERY SERIOUS MATTER. GOD BLESS YOU AND WHO EVER IS CUTTING THEIR WRIST!’, and ‘It wouldn’t make them die. It just leaves large gashes in their arms, which may turn into scars. Slitting your wrists isn’t enough to kill you.’101

  The exact chronology of McQueen’s actions that night is unclear, but there was no doubt of his intentions; this was no ‘cry for help’. He took zopiclone, a prescription sleeping pill, and midazolam, a tranquillizer, both of which were found in his bloodstream, as well as a ‘significant’ amount of cocaine. He tried to slit his wrists with a dagger in the en-suite shower room of the second bedroom; there, police found a chopping board together with a knife sharpener, a large kitchen knife and a meat cleaver. His family regarded this as completely out of character: Lee hated the sight of real blood and would scream in shock and distress if he so much as nipped his finger with a pair of scissors.102 Then, he tried to hang himself in the shower by using the cord of his dressing gown, but failed when the head buckled due to his weight. Finally, he removed the clothes from the guest bedroom closet, took his favourite brown leather belt, looped it around the rail and then used it to hang himself. As he died the scented candle that he had lit earlier continued to burn throughout the night.

  Afterword

  The next morning, at just before ten o’clock, the housekeepers Cesar and Marlene Garcia – a Colombian couple who had worked for McQueen for ten or so years – arrived at the flat in Green Street as usual. Cesar found the front door chained, but he managed to gain access through the utility room. Minter, Juice and Callum were in a state of distress, and he noticed that the flat was in more of a mess than normal. As he started to tidy up, Cesar made his way through into the guest bedroom, where he discovered McQueen’s body hanging in the wardrobe. Cesar called McQueen’s PA Kate Jones, who had just walked into the office and who could not take in the news. She drove around to Green Street, where she discovered the police and an ambulance. Meanwhile, Trino Verkade and Sarah Burton had taken a taxi to McQueen’s flat and had stopped to pick up Shaun Leane, who had also been telephoned by Cesar. ‘As we walked toward the house there’s a part of you that doesn’t want to walk any further,’ said Shaun.1

  McQueen’s family were busy preparing for Joyce’s funeral. Michael heard the news as he was picking up the glasses and cups for the wake from a hire shop. His sister Tracy called him and told him that something had happened to Lee and that he should go to his flat. ‘I was in my cab the night before, driving around Mayfair,’ he said. ‘I couldn’t believe it.’2 Michael then had to break the news to his father, who on hearing about the suicide repeatedly said, ‘Why have you done this to me, Lee?’3 Nobody could get in contact with Jacqui as she was on a treadmill in a gym, without her mobile phone. When she left the gym at midday and she was told the news she broke down. ‘I was never informed that he had tried previously to take his life even though others knew this and had kept it to themselves,’ she said. ‘I would never have left his side, but then again, with all the will in the world, he perhaps wouldn’t have let me near him. But I will never know.’4

  Shaun Leane then telephoned Daphne Guinness, who was in New York with David LaChapelle, and told her about their friend’s suicide. ‘It was the same telephone call as I got from Alexander when Isabella killed herself,’ said Daphne. ‘I couldn’t fucking believe it – and the day before his mother’s funeral.’5 Within minutes the news of McQueen’s death started to be broadcast around the world, and the tributes began to pour in. ‘I admired him tremendously,’ said John Galliano. ‘He was a revolutionary. He will not be forgotten and it is an immense loss . . . Daring, original, stimulating, he understood how to be a fabulous British ambassador for fashion.’ Katharine Hamnett said that Lee was a ‘genius – what a tragic loss’, while Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana released a statement that read, ‘He has left an incomparable void in the world of fashion.’ Diane von Fürstenberg said, ‘It is so sad he was in such a state of despair. Such a great talent, such poetry, it is awful.’ François-Henri Pinault, CEO of PPR (which is now Kering, the majority shareholder of the McQueen label), declared that McQueen had been one of the greatest fashion designers of his generation. ‘Both a visionary and avant-garde, his creations were inspired by tradition and hypermodernity so that they were outside time,’ he said. Sarah Jessica Parker said, ‘I am still in shock and submerged in grief upon learning of the premature death of this gentle genius . . . The tiniest detail: inspired, original, whimsical, splendid, brilliant and gripping, that was Alexander McQueen. And there will be no other. What is even more distressing is that in spite of his success until now, be it creative, critical or commercial, his greatest success lay ahead of him . . . God accelerated Lee. It was a privilege for us to have known you. You will be indescribably missed.’6

  The news of Lee’s death left McQueen’s friends, lovers, and colleagues in a collective state of shock. Alice Smith was in her office when her friend Katie Webb, who worked at the Daily Telegraph, telephoned her. ‘I was upset for him, but I was upset for fashion too,’ she said. ‘I remember thinking, “What is fashion going to do without him?”’7 Andrew Groves was in Salford, working as an external examiner, when a colleague told him. ‘It was incredibly sad, it didn’t have to end like that,’ he said. ‘I thought it was his way of saying, “Fuck you, you don’t own me, I’m killing the brand.” I remember him saying years ago that if he died he wanted the label to die with him.’8 Archie Reed was not surprised by the news. ‘In my heart of hearts I knew that one day this would happen,’ he said. ‘The amount of times I would leave and go home and think to myself, “Am I going to get a phone call? Is he going to go too far this time?”’9 BillyBoy* was hosting a dinner party at his house in Switzerland when the news came through. He excused himself from the table and went to his bedroom where he cried for hours. ‘I was angry, and felt wretched for weeks,’ he said.10 Detmar Blow found out when he was contacted by a newspaper who asked him to write a piece. He was saddened, but not surprised. ‘I felt that Issie had got him and they would be together,’ he said. ‘They were soulmates. He wouldn’t have done it had Issie or his mother been alive as it would have hurt them too much.’11

  Donald Urquhart was sitting in the garden of the Edward VI pub in Islington when George Forsyth came in, his face full of joy. It was obvious that he had not heard the news. ‘I really didn’t know whether to tell him or not,’ said Donald. ‘It had been some years since they sp
lit up, but I knew sweet, big-hearted George would be devastated all the same. I took a deep breath and told him. He absolutely could not believe it . . . It is quite difficult for me to look back on that day and think that soon George Forsyth would be dead.’ George died, aged thirty-four, in London on 23 May 2010 from dihydrocodeine toxicity – the painkiller can induce a euphoric high when taken in excess – which the coroner described as an accidental death. ‘It is almost as though I am watching scenes from some overwrought gothic melodrama, perhaps featuring Shelley and Byron at Lake Como,’ said Donald.12 Lee’s former tutor Louise Wilson was with fashion critic Sarah Mower, who had come into Central St Martins to see a student show. ‘Sarah took the call and dropped the phone,’ said Louise. ‘She said, “My God, Lee is dead.”’13 That night Louise went on BBC Radio 3’s Night Waves to talk about the importance of the designer. ‘It’s an unimaginable loss to fashion worldwide because he was such a mentor and a visionary,’ said Louise, who on 16 May 2014 died in her sleep, aged fifty-two, when she was visiting her family in Scotland.14

  Lee’s friend Miguel Adrover had been working in Turkey and had just arrived home when he switched on CNN. ‘I saw him come out on a stretcher in a plastic body bag,’ he said.15 Murray Arthur had travelled home to Scotland to visit his mother who had been rushed into hospital with stomach cancer. He left the ward, walked downstairs to the canteen and switched his mobile phone on. There were dozens of missed calls and messages. He assumed that people were calling him about his mother. Then he listened to the voicemails, from friends asking him to call them. As he walked through the foyer he saw a television broadcasting images from outside McQueen’s flat. ‘I remember walking to the front door of the hospital and falling to my knees and howling, really crying,’ he said. ‘For the rest of the day I was in silence. I could not contemplate what had happened.’16 In Majorca, Sebastian Pons logged onto the internet where he saw the news, and then telephoned the McQueen studio in London and spoke to Kate Jones and Sarah Burton, who confirmed the worst. He remembers running from his home to his mother’s house crying, ‘He’s dead.’ Four days later he took a flight to London and visited the office. Sarah gave him a hug and she showed him Lee’s desk and suggested he sit in his friend’s chair. ‘And then I saw the collection that he had left, which to me looked like a version of purgatory, and it all made sense,’ he said.17