RIP Alexander McQueen
Flamboyant British fashion designer Alexander McQueen has been found dead at his London home after apparently committing suicide barely a week after his mother died, police and reports say.
Emergency services were called to the 40-year-old's home in central London on Thursday morning and he was pronounced dead at the scene.
Scotland Yard said the death was not being treated as suspicious. Reports said he had hanged himself.
A spokeswoman for the bad boy of British fashion, who rapidly built an international reputation for his outrageous creations, said:"Mr McQueen was found dead this morning at his home."
"At this stage it is inappropriate to comment on this tragic news beyond saying that we are devastated and are sharing a sense of shock and grief," said a statement on his label's website.
McQueen was one of Britain's most lauded fashion designers. He was a four-time winner of the British designer of the year award and was creative director of his own label which was bought out by
Gucci.
His death came days before London fashion week, and ahead of Paris fashion week next month.
Media reports said his mother Joyce died last week, and in a comment on McQueen's Twitter page on Sunday he wrote that he had had an "awful week, but my friends have been great, but now I have to somehow pull myself together".
The Times newspaper reported that his mother was to be buried on Friday.
McQueen's close friend and fashion icon Isabella Blow killed herself three years ago at the age of 48.
Tributes poured in after McQueen's death was announced.
German couture legend Karl Lagerfeld said: "I knew him very little but knew his work, which brought him a lot of success. I found his work very interesting and never banal," he added.
"There was always some attraction to death, his designs were sometimes dehumanised," Lagerfeld said.
"Who knows, perhaps after flirting with death too often, death attracts you."
British designer John Galliano, who works for Dior, said: "McQueen was daring, original, exciting.
"He was a fashion revolutionary."
Galliano added that he was saddened by the avant-garde designer's demise "following the death of his beloved mother", just days ago.
Matthew Williamson, a fellow British designer, added his voice to the tributes: "I am shocked and deeply saddened by McQueen's death. He was a genius and his talent was second to none.
"Like many others, I always cited him as a hugely inspirational leader of world fashion. He will be greatly missed."
The death was reported shortly after 10am.
Seven hours later, the body was brought out of his home on a stretcher, covered in a red blanket, and loaded into a private ambulance.
Born in London's East End into a working-class family - his father was a taxi driver - McQueen rose to fame after graduating from Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design, a hotbed of British fashion, in 1991.
McQueen cut his teeth as a tailor in Savile Row, where legend has it that he left his distinctive mark - in the form of hand-written obscenities - in the lining of a jacket for Prince Charles, heir to the British throne.
After spells with designers Romeo Gigli and Koji Tatsuno, he started his own label and quickly became a controversial figure.
His runway shows were often like performance pieces: One featured models with headwear made of rubbish. Another showed off 25cm heels shaped like lobster claws.
He designed the famous "bumster" trousers, which displayed the cleavage between model's buttocks in a parody of the low-slung trousers worn by workers on London building sites.
After earning the title of best British designer of the Year in 1996, he moved to France, following fellow Londoner Galliano, as chief designer at Givenchy, where he continued to shock.
He toned down his tactics for Paris but enjoyed a further brush with notoriety when he included a disabled amputee model walking on carved wooden legs in a London show.
McQueen's position in the mainstream was assured in 2000, however, when the Gucci Group bought out 51 per cent of his label, and the past decade has seen him launch flagship stores in New York, London and Milan.
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