Alexander McQueen 1969-2010

McQueen and Isabella Blow 1997

I don't quite think there is there is there is anything to say.  I won't talk about how much he will be missed or about his short but spectacular history from Isabella to Givenchy to the McQueen decade.  Instead I will just say what McQueen meant to me.

As a young person trying to absorb live breath and justify the art of fashion McQueen has always felt like a true artisan of this generation.  Yes others have become stars and darlings but I always felt McQueen exemplified why I wanted and always will want to live fashion.  Looking at McQueen for Givenchy I remember being awed at the world he had the ability to create.  Many designers shock you with their textures and their designs but McQueen drew you in to a world that he created in his mind on paper and then right in the photographs of his runways.  Designers usually have a point of design, an idea, a theme but McQueen did not need to tell us his theme.  When dark debonaire men walked down the runway a year ago dapper and masculine in 1800s suits and fur we all felt the dark streets of London stalking Jack the Ripper.  Fashion is aspirational, it is a mantra I live by.  I am always aspiring to taste and live the artistic minds of fashion, and to this little gay boy from a small mountain town in California McQueen will always be the aspirational point to which I reach for.  Thirty years from now when another hot young designer has taken the helm of the House of McQueen and revived it I will tell the fresh faced interns of McQueen's Victorian collection,  alien shoes, and where I was and how the breath left my chest the moment I found out we'd lost him forever.

So my tribute to McQueen is to continue to live by my mantra and reach and aspire to lift and uphold the creativity that he and so many before him bore.

-Sam Kraus