ANNABELLE NEILSON REMEMBERS ALEXANDER MCQUEEN
With a major retrospective of McQueen’s work opening at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, his longtime friend and muse reflects on their unique relationship.
I don't believe in coincidences, and neither did Lee. That's why when Bazaar asked me to talk about my life with Lee Alexander McQueen on March 17, 2011--the exact day of Lee's 42nd birthday--I had the sensation a divine power had tapped into my energy. Lee, as dark as he could get at times, was always looking beyond fashion and beyond people. He looked to the stars too.
The end of March used to be my favorite time of year. After the excitement (and the stress) of Lee's show in Paris, we would plan a vacation for both of our birthdays; I was born two weeks after him. Sometimes we went to the Maldives or the Alps or to swim with the dolphins in Thailand. It was on one of those trips that we went deep-sea diving, which Lee loved to do, where he found the inspiration for his last shows, with all those vibrant colors glowing like exotic fish at the bottom of an ocean. He saw another world deep in the water, one where he was at peace.
This year, acknowledging his birthday without him has been especially difficult. I don't remember much of this time from last year--the days of his passing and his birthday and funeral. It was as if I was in a coma. The only time I can remember feeling is at the birthday Kate [Moss] and Jamie [Hince] organized for me. They sang a special song about love and loss, which they wrote together. It was so sweet, so personal, and just what I needed. It was only the three of us, and I'll never forget it.
I spent the day before Lee's passing at his home. We spent every day together after [his mother] Joyce died, and we were still planning a holiday for our birthdays after his show. He wanted to go kite surfing. All these flowers had come for his mother [who had died the week before], but he hadn't read any of the cards, so he asked me to read them to him, and I did, and I read him some poems. Then I went home.
I got a call from his private assistant the next day when it was discovered what had happened. Lee was constantly fighting with his demons; he had these highs and he had these lows. For a while, our trips would be our escape; we'd rush to the Maldives or go to my parents' house in Spain. My mother loved Lee. He would come over and talk to her about flower arrangements, or she'd come over to see him with a bottle of wine. Sometimes I think my mum would have traded me and my sister in to have Lee as her son!
That phone call was the single lowest moment of my life. Lee promised me he would never do what Isabella [Blow] had done. But who will ever know what was going on in his mind, what he was dealing with? His mother had just passed, his oldest dog, Minter, was dying of cancer, and he was running on an emotional deficit. What I never wanted to believe could happen did. No one will know how premeditated that night was. Sometimes I wonder if, even subconsciously, he knew what he was going to do. He gave me his wallet two days before, explaining he wanted a new one. He gave me a picture of himself with his dog, and he gave me all these other things, even though I said I didn't want them. He wrote some letters; he wrote of his dogs. I wonder now if things would have been different if I hadn't left that night, but a part of me knows that there is nothing anyone could have done to change anything. Lee made the choice he wanted.
At first, because it was easier, I packed up everything he had made for me because I couldn't look at it. For me, and for Lee, clothes are memory. They are history. Lee always said he liked me to wear his clothes because he knew when they were on me, they would have an adventure. I would look in my closet and then ask him, "Why aren't you here, you silly bugger?"
Months later, though, I took them out of storage and started wearing them again. Even though he was gone, I could feel him with me. Now I feel honored to wear them, and I feel honored that I have so many of his designs. It is truly a privilege to be a small vessel that keeps his creative talent alive.
Lee was shy. I think anybody who ever met him knew he was shy. Sometimes he would ask me to chat someone up for him, and I would happily oblige. People thought he was being rude when he didn't show up at an event--believe me, there were more empty seats at fancy parties with our names than there were filled--but he would rather have stayed home.
While he kept some people out, he cherished others. If you look at Lee's history, there are people who have been with him forever: Shaun Leane, Kate Moss, Daphne Guinness, Naomi Campbell, Philip Treacy, Edward Enninful, his entire team. There is an intense amount of loyalty that surrounds a genius. Sarah Burton entered Lee's life a little after I did. It was a difficult choice for her to continue his legacy, but she is the only person in the entire world who could do it. If someone else had been chosen, I would have walked away. She was his protégée--he taught her to cut and drape--but she is her own type of genius as well. She has Lee's vision, which she is not distorting at all, yet she is layering it with her own energy, perhaps making it more feminine and gentle, which is not the same thing as weak.
To watch Lee work was like watching Picasso paint. He wasn't just cutting or pinning fabric, he was creating art. His designs came from real feelings and emotions. Lee was a sensitive soul in the body of a tough businessman. Let's not forget he started a worldwide fashion empire from London's East End, where he grew up. It shows what someone can do with talent and determination. He was always working hard, sometimes to the detriment of himself. When his company grew, he would sometimes miss being in the studio and being alone with his creations.
I often think back to our early years, nearly two decades ago, when Isabella took me to see Lee in his studio in Hoxton Square. She was always shoving girls in his face, but he could tell I wasn't desperate to be a model. He took off my clothes, said he admired my filthy vocabulary, and agreed to dress me for a Paolo Roversi portrait. He also asked me to be in his show. I would have done anything he asked just to be around him. I found his energy magnetic, and he had a wicked sense of humor. It took a few years for us to become truly close, but eventually we would share moments and giggles. I became accustomed to that dirty little laugh of his. Friendships exist only when there is truth and loyalty.
At his home, in the corner where he would work late into the night, he hung two pictures. One was of Isabella, which I think Irving Penn had taken, and the other was a Craig McDean portrait of me, looking down on her. I think it was Lee's way of showing respect to Isabella and to us as his two muses. He would always say he had only two muses in his life because he wouldn't have been able to put up with a third.
Life without Lee has been a shock. I didn't know it at the time, but being in his life meant that mine was in a protective bubble. He gave me everything. Once, a long time ago, he told me I'd only realize what life was really like when he was gone. I didn't believe him, but I'm realizing now how true those words were. Lee let me be a little girl for so long.
The funeral for Lee directly after his passing was very small and very private. But I felt he deserved something else. I won't say bigger, because that's not the right word; I'll just say that his life needed its own sort of showmanship.
I am not the most religious person, but last summer I wanted to see Antony Gormley's installation Flare II at St. Paul's Cathedral. The second I walked in, I realized the reason I was there was not to see Gormley's work but to campaign for Lee's memorial. I believe when someone dies, they can leave an energy behind them, and that energy is more powerful in some people. I knew Lee had sent me to St. Paul's that day.
At the cathedral, I found the Reverend Dr. Giles Fraser, who is the canon chancellor. I must have been going a million miles a second. I told him about my friend Lee, how he had sent me there, how he had died and been a Commander of the Order of the British Empire, how he had touched so many people and brought so much to his native country. He told me to take a deep breath, and then he did the most peculiar thing: He asked me to sing. I told myself, If that's what it's going to take, I'll do it. The only song I know is Patsy Cline's "Walkin' After Midnight," so there in St. Paul's Whispering Gallery, I started singing, "I go out walkin' / after midnight / in the moonlight. ..."
I sang the whole song, and then he told me I needed to write a letter and he would bring it up with the other canons. He made sure I understood that he couldn't promise anything and that typically the cathedral is reserved for world leaders or the royal family, but I had a good feeling about this. I felt it in the stars.
A week later, he told me they had accepted Lee's memorial. The service was held on September 20, 2010, and I couldn't help but feel overwhelmed. Lee gave everyone in that room the shows of their lifetime, and in that moment we tried to give him his appropriate farewell. The service was on par with the sort of beauty he had given us. Lee had always wanted a gospel choir to perform at one of his shows, but he never found a way to work one in, so we had that. We had traditional Scottish bagpipes, as Lee was proudly Scottish. Björk performed wearing a giant pair of wings Lee had made, and she looked unbelievable.
There are a lot of emotions with death. Some people get angry, some people are sad, and some people are frustrated. But I think that Lee's memorial brought us all closer and brought us closure.
Lee and I both loved Edgar Allan Poe's poem "Annabel Lee." I loved it because it was a tragic love story, even though he teased me that I liked it only because of its title. (Even now, he makes me laugh.) Before he died, he had the entire poem embroidered in gold thread onto a giant piece of cloth for me, which I still have. It's the most important thing I own. I read the poem at his private funeral after he died. It was the last thing I ever read to him.
