At the end of the Dante show, a shy-looking McQueen, dressed in a baggy plaid shirt and his head shaven with a series of geometric tramlines, stumbled down the catwalk to take his bow. Applause echoed through the church as he kissed the two most important women in his life: first his mother, Joyce, who had been sitting in the front row, and then an ecstatic, black-befeathered Isabella Blow, to whom he dedicated the show. As Lee rushed backstage, models, friends, stylists, and photographers all told him that the show had been an enormous success.
What nobody but a small group of trusted friends knew, however, was that his relationship with Andrew Groves had reached a crisis point. On the day of the show, Andrew had been bleaching some jeans in the bath and had not had time to wash them. ‘So the model’s legs got bleached,’ he said. Lee was already in a foul mood just before the show. ‘And he thought I had laced up a corset the wrong way, like sabotage,’ he said. ‘He went to the pub afterwards and I didn’t get invited. And that was the end of it.’63
Seven days after the show, McQueen found himself invited to Downing Street to meet the Prime Minister, John Major, at a reception held to celebrate London Fashion Week. Lee was far from impressed. In a photograph taken at the event McQueen, dressed in an overcoat from the collection Dante, and sporting a goatee beard, shaved head and what appears to be a large gold earring, looks distinctly uncomfortable as he stands with John and Norma Major and fellow designer John Rocha. ‘I haven’t a clue about your world,’ said the Prime Minister to him. McQueen, in typically combative mood, responded, ‘We’re only the third-biggest industry in this country.’ How was business? Major asked. McQueen said that he didn’t have to worry, as his backers were Italian and so he did not have any dealings with London, after which Major turned away from him.64 Later, he said of Major, ‘He’s such an idiot. A real plank. I mean, you want someone with bollocks to rule the country. My mum could do better. She’d get the country shipshape.’65
McQueen related his experiences at Downing Street to Colin McDowell who interviewed him for the Sunday Times. Although the fashion journalist and historian had had his doubts about McQueen, now he believed him to be ‘the most stimulating designer of the moment’. He outlined how he thought McQueen could be the saviour of British fashion – ‘his desire to sweep away the barriers of taste might be the kick-start that fashion needs as we approach the millennium,’ he said. ‘Then again, bearing in mind that fashion is a conservative world, he could well end up going nowhere, yet another short, brilliantly iconoclastic career beaten by the system.’ McQueen was honest about his frustrations. What was the point in just reproducing classic, tasteful designs? ‘If people want a boring coat, they can go to DKNY,’ he said. He thought that it was his mission to try and change the way people thought about clothes. ‘I’m not an aggressive person,’ he said, ‘but I do want to change attitudes. If that means I shock people, that’s their problem.’ (After the show McQueen said that he had received a fax from Christ Church complaining that the show was unnecessarily perverse.) He was ambitious – he confided to McDowell that one day he would like to follow John Galliano to Paris and take over the house of Yves Saint Laurent – but stated that he would rather give up everything than compromise. ‘I don’t know whether I can survive in fashion without murdering somebody,’ he said.66
From London Lee flew to New York, where he was due to restage a more ‘aggressive’ Dante at a synagogue in Norfolk Street, on the Lower East Side. New York Fashion Week was in a state of stagnation – one observer commented that it possessed all the excitement of a ‘Labor Day telethon’67– and so McQueen’s spectacle injected a much-needed shot of adrenaline into the season. (‘At this point it’s a matter of what sucked the least,’ sneered one fashion writer.68) McQueen’s reasoning was that his label had already amassed a good amount of sales in Milan and Paris and so he could afford to put on a show that was more about creativity than commercialism. ‘This show is really more to promote the label and maybe scare a few people – though hopefully they won’t cancel their orders,’ he said. ‘New York has this very brash image, but then the clothing is so conservative. I think it’s good to bring a little excitement to New York.’69 Since arriving in Manhattan, McQueen had experienced his own fair share of excitement. Two male models – who were straight – offered to sleep with him if he could help advance their careers. Despite his reputation, he told them to ‘fuck off’ as he found the idea ‘disgusting’.70
Such was the buzz surrounding the show that, despite a snowstorm, it attracted New York’s fashion elite, including Vogue’s Anna Wintour and André Leon Talley. Kate Moss modelled a pair of bumsters and Helena Christensen wore a black lace dress and military jacket. David Bowie had just got in touch to ask if Lee could work on some designs for his forthcoming tour – the rock star sported a McQueen Union Jack waistcoat at his appearance at the Phoenix festival in July and the following year the designer created a Union Jack coat for the Earthling album cover. Upmarket American outlets such as Neiman Marcus and Bergdorf Goodman placed thousands of dollars’ worth of orders, while in the UK the influential Joan Burstein of Browns declared that she had bought McQueen’s collection for the first time.
In April 1996, McQueen flew to Florence for a shoot for American Elle. Lee’s friend Marin Hopper, the magazine’s fashion director, had persuaded her father, the actor Dennis Hopper, to photograph McQueen’s latest collection. There was only one problem: the actor had just married his fifth wife, Victoria, and the couple were on their honeymoon. According to Lee, Victoria ‘was getting pissed off. We were all in the same hotel as them, and these people wanted time alone.’ Lee served as the art director on the shoot and almost as soon as the actor started to take photographs the two men began to argue. ‘We have a bit of a blow-up . . . me and Dennis, because I give people one chance and if it doesn’t work, then I’m not gonna be bothered again,’ recalled Lee. ‘I said something and he said, “Who’s doing the fucking shooting here?” and I went, “Easy tiger, carry on . . .” and I never spoke to him after that.’ But then, on the last night of his stay in Florence, Lee was asked out to dinner by Hopper, who then invited him out to Los Angeles. ‘I was sure I would be the last person they’d want to see after their honeymoon,’ he said.71 Yet according to Marin, Dennis Hopper had nothing but respect for McQueen. ‘My father thought he was a beyond-talented genius,’ she said.72
From Italy, McQueen flew to Japan, where his clothes were in high demand. Surely, asked one New York journalist, it was only a matter of time before the super-successful designer had his own perfume? ‘Yeah,’ replied the quick-witted McQueen. ‘It’s called Eau de Scat.’73
Chapter Seven
‘Where the dreams of your life in fashion become reality’
Lee McQueen on couture
On 13 July 1996, a balmy Saturday evening, Lee was at a party given by Lee Copperwheat at his flat in Cheshire Street, just off Brick Lane, London. He was in a good mood and, after a few drinks, felt himself beginning to relax. As the party progressed he noticed a tall, dark, handsome young man wearing a blue Copperwheat Blundell bomber jacket, a pair of tight blue and black striped Copperwheat Blundell cigarette pants and Fila trainers, who seemed to catch his eye whenever he looked in his direction. McQueen, who was wearing a pair of green army pants and a Burberry shirt, watched as the man knocked back drink after drink and staggered into the bathroom, where he was sick. Lee, who was concerned about his well-being, followed him out to the garden, where he helped him vomit once more, holding his head and stroking his back as he did so. ‘It’s better out than in,’ he told him.
The man was Murray Arthur and when he began to feel better he thanked Lee for his kindness. The two men started to talk and it was immediately obvious that they were attracted to each other. ‘I thought he was the nicest person ever,’ said Murray, who was then twenty-six and working in the Donna Karan shop in Bond Street. The couple left the party and returned to Lee’s loft in Hoxton Square. The next day McQueen took one lo
ok at Murray’s cheap plastic watch and pulled off his own, one from Paul Smith. ‘You’ve got a shit watch,’ he said, passing his over to Murray, ‘so I better see you again because I want that watch back.’ They arranged to have another date later that week, on Thursday 18 July. They met at the Freedom Bar in Soho and had a drink with Roland Mouret, but Murray felt so nervous and tongue-tied he hardly said a word. From there they went to Lee’s favourite Chinese restaurant on Shaftesbury Avenue.
‘Lee knew that I had just arrived in London – I grew up in a village outside Aberdeen – and said that he would understand if I didn’t want to take it any further, if I just wanted to have fun,’ said Murray. ‘I told him that I would like to take it further as I really liked him. I had the next day off work and I remember going back to the hideous, tiny flat I shared in Camberwell and phoning a friend and saying that I thought I was in love, that I had met the person I wanted to spend the rest of my life with. I liked his personality, his incredibly infectious laugh. I liked being around him; he made me laugh more than anything else. He had the most amazing colour eyes, so beautiful, and they would change colour – often you get that with people with blue eyes – sometimes they would be pale, sometimes they would be dark.’
Lee went on a quick trip to the factory in Italy where his clothes were made – he usually travelled there twice a month – and when he returned to London he met up again with Murray for a walk on Hampstead Heath. There, the two men carved their names into the bark of a tree. Three weeks after that first meeting Lee asked his new boyfriend to move into his loft with him. Murray would go to work each morning and he would often come back to find Lee still hard at work in the studio. ‘I remember once in the middle of the night he told me he had just made a sleeve out of one piece of fabric for the first time and I was like, “big deal”,’ he said.
Lee was enamoured of Murray and within a few days of meeting him he had given him the silver pendant that he always wore around his neck with ‘McQueen’ engraved on it. Murray adored Lee’s dog, Minter, and taught him how to sit, lie down, pat and roll over. ‘We had loads of fun and I have really happy memories of those times,’ he said.1 When Murray got a promotion at Donna Karan from sales assistant to supervisor, Lee wrote him a postcard telling him that he loved him and that he was happy for him. After Murray returned home to Aberdeen for a few days, Lee wrote another card that said, ‘I think of you often, especially when I go to bed and when I wake up and you’re not there.’2
Soon after they first met Murray told Lee about his epilepsy, a condition from which he had suffered since the age of twenty. If Murray had a seizure – and sometimes he would have two or three a day – Lee would hold him still, stroke his head and make sure his boyfriend did not swallow his tongue. ‘I’m there to bring him back out of it,’ he said. ‘No other queen in the world would, I don’t think.’3 McQueen, through Isabella, introduced Murray to Dr Charles Levinson, the husband of Detmar’s sister Selina Blow, who arranged for him to see the best brain specialist in Britain. ‘Lee used to worry himself sick,’ said Murray. ‘He did everything he could and was very compassionate about my condition.’4
One Saturday, after a heavy night out, Lee told Murray that he had booked himself into a tattoo parlour on St John Street, Clerkenwell. McQueen loved tattoos – he had his first one, an intricate image of a Koi carp, etched into his chest soon after moving into the loft in Hoxton Square. Mira Chai Hyde remembers going with him to the tattoo parlour to hold his hand. ‘He was squeezing my hand so hard I came out with fingernail marks,’ she said. ‘My hand was so bloody afterwards.’5 That day in 1996, McQueen planned to get a tattoo of a peony together with Murray’s name beside it. Lee asked his boyfriend if he would let the tattoo artist inscribe his name on to his arm. (‘His and hers’ tattoos – or in this case ‘his and his’ – were very much in vogue at the time, and the celebrity couple of the moment, Patsy Kensit and Liam Gallagher, had proclaimed their love by having each other’s names etched onto their skin.) Murray agreed and had ‘McQueen’ tattooed on the upper part of his right arm in black ink. But when Lee sat down in the tattooist’s chair he suddenly changed his mind, telling his boyfriend that the process was too painful and he was too hungover to go through with it. Later that night Murray went to a party where he met some friends from Scotland; when they saw the tattoo they told him that one day he would regret it.6
Often, Murray and Lee would spend the weekend at Hilles, Isabella and Detmar’s house in the country. ‘He comes up maybe four times a year, maybe half a dozen, and completely takes it over,’ said Isabella. ‘As soon as he arrives it becomes his office and it becomes his play den and he relaxes and he feels very at home.’7 Isabella had arranged for herself and Lee to have lessons in falconry. ‘I think he goes into another world when he’s up there, especially when he’s with his birds,’ said his mother.8 Isabella said this was one of ‘the most exciting’ things the friends had ever done together. She employed two local mechanics who were ‘obsessed about training wild birds’, particularly Harris Hawks.9 ‘McQueen was a natural and soon had them flying and landing on his arm,’ said Detmar. ‘He liked the big leather glove he had to wear to protect himself from their claws.’10 Murray was less keen – even pigeons scared him, he said – but he would love to stand back and watch as Lee handled the birds.
Visiting Hilles was, said Murray, always ‘quite heavenly’. The couple would stay in the room with the four-poster and pull the curtains around the bed so that they felt secure in a self-created, womb-like space. They would sleep in for as long as they wanted, and in the mornings, wander down to the kitchen to make themselves a cup of tea. They liked going for walks with Minter in the lush countryside and sitting around a hot fire. One weekend Princess Michael of Kent, who lived in nearby Nether Lypiatt Manor, arrived for Sunday lunch. ‘She was really nice, and being really funny and cracking loads of dirty jokes and suddenly there was the most god-awful smell,’ said Murray. ‘I lifted up the tablecloth and there was the biggest dog shit you can ever imagine – Minter had just done it under the table. I turned to Isabella and told her what had happened and she told me to go and get the housekeeper. I put my napkin over the top of it and excused myself from the table. By the time I came back Princess Michael of Kent was laughing her head off, saying, “Don’t worry, my husband [Prince Michael of Kent] is president of Battersea Dogs Home. We’ve got dog shit all over our house, you wouldn’t believe the mess.”’11
Towards the end of the summer of 1996, McQueen was busy preparing his next collection and show, which he had decided to call Bellmer La Poupée. The inspiration had come from the work of Hans Bellmer, a German artist who in McQueen’s words ‘dissected dummies and reconstructed them’.12 In 1933, Bellmer had originally been motivated to make his strange-looking dolls in response to the cult of the body beautiful promulgated by the Nazi Party. Some of the unsettling images he produced, such as the 1936 photograph The Doll, a surreal shot of a disembodied female torso missing arms and legs, resembled the work of Joel-Peter Witkin. Both artists appealed to Lee’s fascination with the macabre and his unconventional view of what was aesthetically pleasing. As he would write just days before his death, ‘Beauty can come from the . . . strangest of places, even the most disgusting places.’13 In order to transfer these ideas to the catwalk, Lee turned to his friend Shaun Leane for help. McQueen wanted him to design a shackle that would fit onto a model’s wrists and legs, which would force her to walk like one of Bellmer’s dolls. The friends would meet up for a drink and Lee would sometimes draw a sketch of what he wanted on the back of a beer mat.
McQueen asked his friend Dai Rees to create face-and-headpieces for the show. Rees remembers taking them round to the Hoxton Square studio, where he met Isabella for the first time. Lee knew that Dai had studied ceramics and so when his friend turned up at the loft and said he had something to show him McQueen assumed he meant pieces made from pottery. He was surprised when he saw Dai take out three head cages made from quill feath
ers. ‘There was this huge mirror at the bottom of the stairs and Lee and Issie were both having a laugh trying them on,’ he said. ‘I remember Lee saying, “This will really fuck Philip [Treacy] off,” as he knew that Philip and I didn’t get on. At that point, Lee asked me to produce another five of these in specific colours.’ On his second visit to the studio Lee asked Dai if he could make a number of leather pieces for the neck and face. Rees told him that he had never worked with leather, but Lee convinced him that he would be able to do so. Two weeks later Dai returned with ten hand-moulded leather neck and face braces with quill feathers and Lee ‘was blown away by them’.14
Lee had recently seen Richard Wilson’s installation 20:50 at the Saatchi Gallery, a specially constructed room that had been filled with highly reflective sump oil, and wanted to somehow create the same effect on the catwalk. ‘How can we do it?’ he repeatedly asked Simon Costin. Once the venue had been organized – the Horticultural Halls in Victoria – Simon went along to inspect the site. ‘I went with a plastic sheet and some pieces of two-by-two which I screwed together and filled with water,’ said Simon. ‘We jumped up and down next to it to see how solid the floor was, and to see if it would ripple.’ He then made a frame two feet high and 150 feet long with a black lining, ‘as large as I could make it within the space and still get the audience in – the aim was to make it look like a black mirror’. It seemed as though it would work perfectly, but then the sponsors of the show, Tanqueray gin, demanded that their logo should be on view. ‘I thought why not do a black logo for them and so that’s what we did,’ said Simon. ‘It was so black you couldn’t see it.’15
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