Lee Alexander McQueen

>> Daphne Guinness, a longtime champion of Alexander McQueen, reveals that originally she was afraid to meet the designer: “I admired him and didn’t want to meet him because I am quite shy, but Isabella [Blow] said I must. But I didn’t want to be a groupie. It had to happen organically. You don’t have to know someone to love their work. One day he saw me walking across the street in his kimono and he ran up to me and said, 'I’m the person you don’t want to meet!' We went to a pub and hit it off. Of course after that I was so irritated not to have known him before!” [W]

>> Documents made public today reveal that Alexander McQueen left an estate worth just over 16 million pounds ($26 million) at the time of his death. The designer, who committed suicide in Feb. 2010, left most of his fortune to charities, but also set aside portions for his siblings, household staff, and the upkeep of his dogs.

Among the allotments: 250,000 pounds ($410,000) each to his three sisters and two brothers; 50,000 pounds ($82,000) each to his two housekeepers for their "long and faithful service," his godson, and each of his nieces and nephews; and 50,000 pounds ($82,000) for the care of his dogs. He also donated 100,000 pounds ($164,000) each to two charities that help animals — the Battersea Dogs and Cats Home and Blue Cross sick animal center — and 100,000 pounds ($164,000) each to the London Buddhist Center and the Terrence Higgins Trust, the latter which promotes sexual health and safe sex practices.

The bulk (and remainder) of his estate was left to his Sarabande charity with the suggestion that some money be used for scholarships at Central St. Martin's in London, of which he was a graduate.

>> Sarah Burton was reportedly spotted going into the hotel where Kate Middleton is staying yesterday, and now word is floating around that Middleton's dress is Alexander McQueen, but Sarah Burton didn't design it.

Instead, the Daily Mirror's Mark Jefferies Tweets: "Sarah Burton seen in Goring hotel,but heard rumour from other journo design is by McQueen himself, so could be vintage or from his sketches!" And Telegraph UK's Bryony Gordon Twittered: "Top fashion source just msged to confirm that [Jefferies's] tweet. Apparently the dress is a vintage McQueen design." Gordon adds: "Apparently Sarah Burton is only doing the fitting, not actual design."

>> In anticipation of "Savage Beauty,” this year's Alexander McQueen-focused Costume Institute gala and its accompanying exhibit which opens next month, Sarah Burton shared some of her favorite memories of working with the designer. Among the highlights, the Fall 2006 finale dress at left, of which Burton says: "This dress was actually based on my wedding dress — I got married two years earlier. We had to figure out how to make lace work in the round with those ruffles because Lee hated gathering. So we cut out all of the flowers from the lace and reappliqued it on tulle to make our own fabric. This is the collection most people remember as the one with Kate Moss in a hologram. Oh, my God, it was so beautiful. He loved that show.” [Vogue.com]

>> Tomorrow night, a new documentary on the relationship between Isabella Blow and Alexander McQueen premieres on British television. The documentary, McQueen and I, includes rare McQueen footage and interviews with his brother, ex-boyfriend, friends, co-workers, models, and Blow's husband.

McQueen's brother Michael is shown revisiting the crowded house where they grew up in on London's East End and tells the filmmakers: "It was three boys all in one bedroom. You could see the birds flying around the top there. If you see Lee’s shows there was a lot of feathers and birds going on. That is where Lee got a lot of his ideas." Asked about McQueen's death, which came shortly after their mother passed away — an event the designer struggled to cope with — Michael replied: "She wouldn’t have been over the moon with my brother for what he did. I’m afraid no one was. It was very disappointing in that respect. He always thought the world of our mum." The film also relates how McQueen's mother made sandwiches backstage for the models at some of his first shows to keep budget down.

The designer's former design assistant Catherine Brickhill recalls in an interview that at one of his Givenchy shows: "There wasn’t a lot of space, people were running around and I remember [McQueen] running over to Eva Herzigova and cutting the laces on her corset and saying ‘You f**king bitch' and y’know dragging her to get her to exit on time. She was in tears by the time she was out there. No one had ever treated her that way."

Former head Givenchy publicist Eric Lanuit is captured in the documentary saying: "The press officer’s role is also to be a nanny. [McQueen] would call to ask for certain ‘vitamin substances’ to help him stay up all night and through the day of a fashion show. I’m not talking about vitamin C, I am talking about cocaine."

And model Jodie Kidd says: "I was just beginning as a model and he was just beginning as a designer. Every time we went out on the catwalk we would be lined up and he would say ‘Come on Jode, go for it,’ psyching me up and then he would say ‘Out’ and off we would go."

>> In the past year, Gareth Pugh has been rumored to be taking jobs at both Alexander McQueen and Thierry Mugler. Obviously neither of those worked out — Sarah Burton is now in place at McQueen, and Nicola Formichetti has filled in at Mugler — but when it comes to an opportunity at another label, Pugh says: "I would never say never. I have never been asked so I wouldn't know whether I would say yes or no. If I did do it, it would certainly have to be the right thing. I'm not holding out for that. It would obviously change the way I work and the way I live and I'm quite happy with what I do at the moment so it would have to be a very good offer."

He continued: "There have been so many rumours. How many jobs can one person do? To be honest with you, I thought that the McQueen thing was a little in bad taste with the circumstances surrounding that. Other than the inappropriateness of it, it is vaguely flattering but obviously the inappropriateness did rather take over."

And it sounds like he didn't necessarily feel qualified for the McQueen job: "I met [McQueen] a couple of times but I didn't know him as a person, I never worked with him. They obviously have a very specific way of working there — and Sarah Burton obviously worked with him for a long, long time and to be given that role and responsibility is a tough one. To step into those shoes, I'm not jealous of that situation at all, I don't envy her position. It's flattering but I think a little ill-founded."

>> Sarah Burton started working for Alexander McQueen when he was based at a "tiny studio," she tells British Vogue in its February 2011 issue: "At the interview, I remember Lee asking me, 'Do you believe in UFOs?'"

She owes her design knowledge to McQueen, she says: "Everything I know, I learned here. If you didn't know how to do something, Lee made you take on the challenge and would teach you how, or leave you to figure out how to do it yourself. He once handed over a bias-cut houndstooth dress and said, 'Now, put a zip in it,' then left for the weekend!"

But despite that, and the fact that McQueen CEO Jonathan Akeroyd, Gucci Group CEO Robert Polet, and PPR CEO Francois-Henri Pinault all implored her to take the head job at McQueen's label after he died in February, 36-year-old Burton spent weeks deliberating the decision. "For quite a long time I didn't want the job," she explained. "I thought: how would I ever even begin to begin? Lee's mind was so different to everyone else's. I knew there was no way I could pretend to be him; but I had to ask myself, what did Lee work for? For all this to close down? I thought about what I wanted. What was best for me. Like many women my age, I do want children, but I came to think that that's not a reason not to take up a challenge. In the end, I decided to just get on with it: do my best."

There will, of course, be pieces of the McQueen legacy that will remain McQueen's alone. "I could not take on the shows!" Burton laughs. "But I wanted the catwalk to be intimate, to be about the craftsmanship, the designs. People ask: what's Sarah about? But I've worked here so long, there's been a big part of me in those collections all along the way. I'm not going to wipe the slate clean. That would be wiping me away. There will always be McQueen elements, but at the same time, you can never stay still and have to stay true to yourself. That's what Lee drummed into me: you have to be able to stand behind your work."