Alexander McQueen takes on L.A. with a new Melrose store
STYLE NOTEBOOK
Known for his dark side, the designer will bring his more polished look to a sprawling, attention-getting store on Melrose Avenue in May.
IT'S not often that a major European designer poised to open a West Coast flagship shudders at the mention of Paris Hilton. Then again, that's just the sort of nose-thumbing the world has come to expect from Alexander McQueen, the son of a London cabbie who has established himself as the enfant terrible of the fashion world, sending live wolves down the runway, and basing an entire collection on the Salem witch trials, right down to a blood-red pentagram on the floor.
"If she comes past the shop, hopefully she'll just keep walking," McQueen said of the paparazzi princess. "I don't really covet that sort of thing."
Blustery celebutante talk aside, the designer was in a good mood on a recent morning at the Chateau Marmont, just weeks out from his Paris show, a monarchy-meets-maharajah masterpiece that ranked among the fall season's best. The collection was full of soft, feminine forms, bright colors and dresses with couture-worthy detail (some of which will almost assuredly end up on a red carpet somewhere in town). The collection was so polished and elegant, it seemed to signal the dawn of a kinder, gentler Alexander McQueen.
"Me? I'm gentle as a teddy bear," he said with a laugh. "We all carry both the dark and the light with us, I don't see why it shouldn't be reflected in my work."
Physically, McQueen has always come across as a sparkplug of a fellow, a muscled knot of a hooligan with a wrestler's physique and close-cropped hair. But sitting on an overstuffed couch in the Chateau's lounge the day before his 39th birthday (he was born on St. Patrick's Day, 1969), he seems as dangerous as an actuary with a head cold. Clad in white running shoes, dark blue jeans and a blue crew-neck sweater over a white button-front shirt, he's sniffling slightly (blame the air conditioning) and sipping tea from a cup the size of a soup tureen.
He admits that his latest runway show was "a bit more calculated and thought out" than previous ones, partly the effect of losing his longtime friend and mentor, Isabella Blow.
After she died, McQueen went on a pilgrimage to India (he's a Buddhist). There, in addition to finding inspiration for both his men's and women's collections (the men's was full of references to the Tibetan Plateau, including shaggy fur hats and mirror-embroidered pieces), he seemed, despite the cliché of it all, to find his center.
