The first biography of designer Alexander McQueen - a genius, a gay, a neurotic, a Scot, a martyr and a suicide - is retold, in general, in one sentence: "The story of a London working-class boy who paid a terrible price for the right to enter the shining world of fashion and die there" . The author of the book, journalist Andrew Wilson, pedals the word “terrible” in every possible way - right in the preface he promises the reader a “terrible tale”. And although this image successfully correlates with the work of the hero himself - gothic, flawless and a little scary, in reality the resulting book is much more like a classic success story, with which the tragic ending fits so badly.
"I'm a journalist and author. My work has appeared in the Guardian, the Washington Post, the Daily Telegraph, the Observer, the Sunday Times, the Independent on Sunday, the Daily Mail, the New Statesman and the Evening Standard magazine." - Andrew Wilson about himself
The son of a taxi driver, the sixth and last child in the Lee family, Alexander McQueen, was not born at the best moment: immediately after his birth, the father of the future fashion designer lost his job and went to a psychiatric hospital due to a serious nervous breakdown. In order to somehow feed the family, Lee's older sister (in the family they preferred to call the boy by his first name) had to leave school and go to work. At the age of five, Lee fell face down, injured his jaw and, in the figurative expression of one of his future boyfriends, acquired “teeth like Stonehenge.” Next - a school in a proletarian district (a favorite pastime is throwing stones at the vans where the gypsies lived), petty theft, overweight, teacher harassment, sexual abuse by the older sister's husband. In the future - some kind of "honest and simple" profession that McQueen Sr. wanted for his children. His only consolation and outlet is poking around in the genealogy of his own family, partly recreated, partly invented by McQueen’s mother Joyce, an amateur archivist (“Lee was drawn to the past; it seemed to him that it was more interesting and safer. Perhaps there he found refuge from the harsh reality and pain of the present life,” the biographer sagely remarks). And then - a rapid, like a rocket takeoff, a leap beyond this gray routine: first into the conservative world of men's fashion on Savile Row, and then higher, higher - to "the very top of the mainmast", as Herman Melville would say. Recognition, awards, celebrity friendships and delight, wealth, a series of exotic lovers, drugs, new collections, more awards, more lovers, more delights, depression, mother's death, death.
As can be seen even from the short quote above, Blood Under the Skin by Andrew Wilson is a very simple and sometimes naive book. Unlike Ackroyd, who is able to digest and rethink the object of his description (albeit not without detriment to the latter), Wilson certainly does not have the scale of personality necessary to digest and integrate McQueen. All his interpretations are emphatically straightforward and unsophisticated, and the abyss of vice and despair into which his hero plunges (or, if you like, takes off) evokes in the author not so much a sacred horror, which he rather unsuccessfully tries to emulate, but a gullible attraction and curiosity. And in the tragic denouement, Wilson sees not the majestic and gloomy pace of fate, but a reason for disappointment and barely disguised annoyance - oh, how much the guy has achieved, but failed to rejoice.
And yet, for all its shortcomings, Wilson's "Blood Under the Skin" has one very important virtue: it is a very honest book. Though written with the support and blessing of the McQueen family, the biography does not attempt to contrast the virtues of the working class with the decadence and idleness of the secular establishment. The author clearly sympathizes with the hero, but does not at all seek to justify him in any situation - however, he does not indulge in moralizing. And also (and this is where McQueen's biography compares favorably with Akroyd's book) Wilson works very honestly with sources: he compares versions, regretfully discards some beautiful hypotheses in favor of others - much less attractive, and when he cannot get to the bottom of the truth, he does not try to replace it. with his reconstructions, but honestly says “I don’t know.” "Blood under the skin" is definitely not the last word about the great fashion designer, but the first and at the same time useful - which is also important.
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