The night before Alexander McQueen’s Plato’s Atlantis collection was to be staged in Paris, on 6 October 2009, Sam Gainsbury, McQueen’s show producer, tried on the reptile-scaled lobster-claw shaped boots that became known as armadillo shoes. The heels were 10 inches high. “I couldn’t walk,” she said. “So I went and found Lee [Alexander McQueen’s given name] and I said, ‘I can’t walk in these, and I can walk in any heel. This could be a disaster. What if the girls fall?’ And he said, ‘If they fall, they fall.’”
Had they fallen, they would have done so in the first catwalk show ever to be live streamed on the internet. With one twist of an ankle that show could have been remembered for callously putting young women in danger. McQueen, bloody-minded, made it into a victory parade. “Before the show Lee was backstage with all these 17-year-old models,” Gainsbury recalled, “looking into their eyes, telling them how incredible they looked, how proud he was, that they could do it. He gave them such confidence. And not one of them fell. It was like a gift, with Lee. He made you feel like you were capable of anything.”
Darkness makes for a good story, so I understand people want to talk about that. But he also had a romantic side
He was fascinated with the chase and the predator idea that we were all hunted. But McQueen identified with the prey
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