Since the fashion designer Alexander McQueen took his own life at the age of 40 in 2010, his life and work has been mythologised in a colossally successful exhibition in London and New York entitled Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty, and there has been a projected movie – now reportedly on hold – to which Jack O’Connell and Andrew Haigh were once attached as star and director. Now there is this sombre, thorough, intelligent and informative documentary by Ian Bonhôte giving us the moving story of a working-class boy with fierce and original talent who began as a tailor’s apprentice in Savile Row before getting mentored into the big league by fashion writer and salonnière Isabella Blow, and whose increasingly outrageous and confrontational shows made him one of the fashion world’s biggest stars.
