Last Thursday the world was stunned to learn of the death of fashion designer Alexander McQueen at the age of forty.  Why did he die?

Born Lee Alexander McQueen, the youngest of six children and the son of a London Cabbie, McQueen was considered by many to be at the forefront of world fashion with his innovative designs which pushed the boundaries and raised the profile of the British fashion industry. He won the British Designe of the Year award four times, and was also named International Designer of the Year in 2003. His eagerly anticipated shows, unconventional  and unpredictable, were an extraordinary extravaganza of  highly imaginative performance and design. McQueen himself described them as “the culmination of everything that goes around in my mind.’’

It has been cofirmed that the upcoming London Fashion Week will honour McQueen by featuring a tribute to him.which is to be discussed with and approved by his family.

When it was announced last week that he had been found dead at his London home, there were reports that he had killed himself. The police would not comment on these reports, but said that there were no suspicious circumstances and that a  post mortem had been scheduled. Statements were issued expressing shock and grief and asking that the media repect the family’s request for privacy.

Today the reports of apparent suicide were confirmed when, following Monday’s postmortem, an inquest into his death heard that he had left a note then hanged himself in his wardrobe. The hearing today lasted only five minutes and a full inquest will take place in late April.

It has been widely reported that McQueen was absolutely devastated by the death, on February 2^nd, of his much adored mother, Joyce, with whom he had a close relationship. He had expressed his grief and the difficulty he was experiencing in coping with this on social networking site Twitter, and took his life the day before her funeral. A few years earlier he had struggled with the death by suicide of his close friend and mentor Isabella Blow. It is believed that some friends and colleagues had been concerned about him of late, but nevertheless, the discovery of his body came as a shock.

The contents of the note McQueen left have not been made public. We have a ‘flavour’ of the anguish he was experiencing in relation to his mother’s death from his Twitter posts. The tragedy is that the essence of the man, the source from which his creative genius sprang, the emotional depths that lay behind the beauty of his inspiring creations may, on this final occasion, have resulted in a pain so unbearable that rather than a beautiful creation, they culminated in the ultimate destruction, the annihilation of the creative genius that was McQueen.