As if there couldn't be a more devastating way to start fashion week, news broke this morning that Alexander McQueen had committed suicide. Rumors about his health circulated ever since his magnum opus of Fall 2008, a characteristically haunting albeit exotic and romantic collection. Whatever led him to take his own life, it is clear that McQueen was a rather dark and complex man, whom we are just beginning to understand. Whether he staged a human chess board, or trapped his models in a two-way mirrored asylum, his was a perversity that explored and exalted the boundaries of beauty.
