Reading the reports of Alexander McQueen's death you would think we had lost an Oscar Wilde or a Jimi Hendrix. "He was a genius," says Kathaine Hamnett. "What a terrible tragic waste." "His brilliant imagination knew no bounds," says Vogue editor Alexandra Shulman.
I'm always skeptical when the word “genius” is bandied about by the fashionista -- more or less everything is “genius” in their world, as in, “Love that belt, darling. It’s genius.” I oversaw an Alexander McQueen fashion shoot for Vanity Fair's Cool Britannia issue in 1997 (styled by Isabella Blow) and the thing that really stood out was the cult of personality he had managed to create around himself. (To read more, click here.)
