::NEWS::--late edition for those not aware--

ALEXANDER MCQUEEN-YESTERDAY A GREAT MAN PASSED
Lee McQueen, who would later find fame as fashion visionary Alexander McQueen, was born on 17 March 1969 in London.

Surprisingly, the boy destined for a future in high couture and style was fathered by a polyester clad London cabbie.

By the time he was sixteen, McQueen had decided to devote himself entirely to fashion. He dropped out of school and took an apprenticeship at the Savile Row tailors ‘Anderson and Shepherd’. This experience gave him the opportunity to sharpen his technical clothes making skills and tailoring, skills for which he is famed today.

He progressed to ‘Gieves and Hawkes’ and then to costumiers ‘Angels and Bermans’. The variety of his apprenticeships gave him the opportunity to master many different tailoring techniques. This would be put to good use later in his career.

From tailoring on Saville Row, McQueen made the transition to working alongside Koji Tatsuno and at the age of 21 he moved to Milan to work with Romeo Gigli.

All this experience was converted to success, and McQueen was able to complete a masters degree in fashion design at the prestigious Central St. Martins College. His collection, the culmination of his apprenticeships, received keen media attention and firmly established him as a promising young fashion designer.

He then set about making a name for himself. His shows were remarkably theatrical and his ‘brutally sharp’ style brought him much attention and acclaim.

He also crafted a reputation. McQueen, by virtue of a petulant bad boy image and frequent outbursts, became ‘L’enfant Terrible’. Attitude in tow, McQueen and his new self-titled label were taking over fashionable London.

The fashion world was quaking in the wake of l’enfant. He won the ‘British Designer of the Year Award’ in 1996, 1997 and in 2001. In 1997 he was employed by couture house Givenchy and promptly, and impudently, dismissed the label’s founder, Hubert de Givenchy, as ‘irrelevant’. Subsequently, his first Givenchy line bombed.

McQueen, however, was still respected in the fashion world and was allowed a second chance, a great mark of respect in a notoriously unforgiving industry. In 2000 Gucci purchased a controlling interest in the ‘McQueen’ line. This move ended McQueen’s tumultuous relationship with Givenchy and gave him a greater creative license.

Recently McQueen has used this to score a ‘Designer of the Year by The Council of Fashion Designers of America’ and a CBE. The cabbie’s enfant done good.