McQueen is dead, long live McQueen.
My A-level fashion/textiles teacher was a massive Alexander McQueen fan. I got put in his textile/fashion design class having not got my first choice of graphics (which was massively oversubscribed by the time of my late registration) and after having been passed on from the head of sculpture department who washed her hands of me in dismay as I refused to touch clay or wire in favour of ‘designing’ club flyers in my sketch book.
So there I was in fashion & textiles, again with the wire but now encouraged to structure bodices with it using recycled packaging. Our teacher told us not to bother thinking about a career in fashion unless we studied at Central St. Martins after Foundation. He then told us none of us would get in anyway (with this kind of coursework set, it seemed he was engineering our failure) and suggested we should aim low to avoid disappointment. He projected his own shortcomings onto this eager class who believed his narrow vision to be gospel. He believed himself to be the last word in creation of aesthetic beauty and the very font of original ideas. In fact, he was frustrated, mean and discouraging to his class, and took most of his ideas (it would appear) from Blue Peter.
As a compromise instead of making a dress from persil bottles, I developed my flyer design into fashion illustration (copying from the photos in Vogue) in my sketch book. It was when I did a project on Alexander McQueen for my coursework did I strike upon the topic which made Mr.Textiles soul blaze. He was into this dude, big time and jealously discussed him with me when I intermittently showed him my work. His bitter St. Martin’s-word-to-the-wise speech makes sense now as though he saw himself as something of an un-discovered McQueen gathering dust in the sixth form textile department.
He gave me the kind of mark for that piece of work that smacked of a man who would not allow himself to be outdone on his chosen subject. Even if I had attached a piece of that season’s collection to the work with a letter of authentication he probably still would’ve given me the lowest mark he could.
In the end I dropped out of A-level Art all together, amongst other things I was railing against my formative years as an über geek. His approach to deflating the dreams of his students was representative of the department who, it seemed, were not looking to nurture creativity but ensure it would not outshine their own. This only served to feed into my own lack of self belief at that time, fueled by a penchant for weed smoking and not turning up to class. At least I was 17 and had time to turn the corner, my teacher then was already a lost cause.
I thought about him when I drove past the sombre McQueen offices in the 55 today. How he drew an unsaid parallel between himself- a narrow minded, unfulfilled, small town boy- and Lee McQueen- a visionary, accomplished, not-such-a-small-town boy- without seeing the obvious ironies. I’m sure Mr. Textiles had a lump in his throat today, a mournful waste to mirror his own. 
