Alexander McQueen, Designer, Is Dead at 40 – Fashion Week – The New York Times

Alexander McQueen, the renegade British fashion designer known for producing some of the most provocative collections of the last two decades, was found dead on Thursday morning in his London home, the police there said. He was 40.

Mr. McQueen’s family did not make a statement about the cause of death, but a spokesman for the Metropolitan Police said it was not being treated as suspicious. A representative of Mr. McQueen, who would not speak for attribution, said the cause was apparently suicide.

Mr. McQueen’s death stunned the hundreds of international magazine editors and store buyers who had just convened in Manhattan for the first day of the fall collections at New York Fashion Week at Bryant Park.

Mr. McQueen often showed a dark streak in his collections, commenting on brutality toward women and what he saw as the inanity of the fashion world, and it carried over into his personal life. Though he had an acknowledged history of drug abuse and wild behavior, close friends said they were surprised by the news of his death. He had been deeply affected, in 2007, by the suicide of Isabella Blow, the eccentric stylist who had championed him, and he was said to be devastated by the death of his mother, Joyce, on Feb. 2, after a long illness.