Why Didn't God Save McQueen?

Maybe this is our reality now, maybe deaths are something we have to get used to on an everyday basis. The world is as weird as it gets, life is tantalizing, life is excruciating even for rich genius superstars, not just for make-ends-meet folks. Nobody is safe anymore.

When did life become so burdensome? To the point that you can’t take it anymore? I don’t even know how to feel about Alexander McQueen’s suicide.

One minute I feel hopeless even somebody that comes from nothing and achieves everything can't bear it; the next minute I feel hopeful, happy, and grateful for my mental and emotional stability, no matter what I face in life. But hope doesn’t sit with me for long, the thought of geniuses deciding to exit this planet while there is such shitty, useless folk everywhere you turn, makes me hyperventilate.

There are so many pointless “reality” stars making millions of dollars, and contributing absolutely nothing useful to society; they just live, spend, bullshit, bask in their superficiality, and slam us with their irrelevance every single day.

And people like Alexander McQueen voluntarily chose not to be a part of the world, to deprive the world of their talent, to refute people their genius. Where is the hope?

I’m not going into a rumor of McQ ailing from manic depression, those are unconfirmed rumors, and I don’t want to add more fuel to them. Whatever the reason was, the death of a mother, the suicide of a best friend and mentor – if this smart, amazingly talented, accomplished man can not see the light out of the tunnel, where is the hope for the rest of us?

I feel so discouraged and demoralized; so many amazing people die, people that matter, people that inspire, people that make a difference; and what are we left with? A 23-year-old idiot smiling at me from a cover of the magazine, explaining the real reasons behind her 10 plastic surgery procedures in one day?

I know, I’m being unreasonable. Everyone deserves to live, be, do. Exist. I’m aware I’m being an asshole.

They say when someone dies, you should try to think about positive things and positive memories about them, and when I think about Alexander McQueen, I remember the funniest detail – my college days in NYC, studying at the Fashion Institute of Tech. and the assignment I once got. A 10-page biography on one of the three designers to choose from; my assigned options – Norma Kamali, Calvin Klein, and Alexander McQueen.

The first instinct was to go with Calvin Klein, after all - he was the most famed FIT Alumni, we know everything there is to know about him, they banged it into our memories, day in and day out. Calvin was also the choice of every full-bloodied, partying-every-night kind of student. Simple, short, easy, throw in some double spacing, and boom, the paper is ready in one hour.

But not even Calvin’s two-time bankruptcy could be stretched on 10 pages, the guy was just too boring to research (well, except that Studio 54 stint), so I sat in my chair and thought – only that hooligan McQueen and his antics, fights, scandals, contradictions will do, something I can fill a 10-pager! So that’s what I wrote about. Got an A-, too.

And that’s the thing with McQueen. He’s so complex, so layered, so distinct – how can you summarize him in just a couple of words? But I can pull my college paper, and summarize what I wrote back then:

"Alexander McQueen always gave me hope that you don’t have to be sidelined just because you’re different, because you don’t conform to the traditions of the society; your talent can overcome all of that. He gave me hope that you can be rude, fearless, loutish and still make suits for the Prince (hey, not that Prince).

You can work for a huge label like Givenchy while talking trash about everybody in the firm, you can force punk and goth on tradition, you can force people to stare at the grotesque and make them see the beauty you see.

You can look and act like a hooligan and instead of being an outcast, become the "hooligan of haute couture". His fashion shows didn’t just showcase clothes; he used catwalk for his theatrical, aggressive and almost volatile imagination, sometimes unclear if he does that for his own therapeutic reasons, or simply as a political and/or social provocation. His clothes were pure poetry. Stuff that dreams were made of. He could cut patterns and structure clothes like only old-school English tailors can.

All while wearing grey cardigan with Doc Martens in tow.”

I read a comment on the internet somewhere today discussing McQueen’s death saying – “Why is everybody talking about this guy, who cares about him, he just made clothes!“.

Well, that’s exactly the sorrow. He really just didn’t.