15 October 1996 Fashion house Givenchy makes the 27-year-old self-proclaimed East End yob its designer

Sitting in the front row, surrounded by French fashion glitterati – all big hair, big shoulder pads and, it goes without saying, big money – the 27-year-old maverick of British fashion, Lee Alexander McQueen, couldn’t have looked more out of place. He is, after all, the designer whose past accolades have included (famously, during his Savile Row apprenticeship) scrawling obscenities inside the lining of a jacket destined for the Prince of Wales, mooning at the paparazzi on the catwalk and generally f-ing and blinding his way through kissy-kissy fashion life.

True, he’s undergone something of an image overhaul. A smart black tuxedo and crisp white shirt have replaced his usual uniform of check shirt and baggy jeans. Otherwise, he looked the way he always does – more East End bruiser than haute couturier.

Yesterday, the drama that has eclipsed all other papers at the Paris collection was finally resolved. In a double whammy for British fashion, John Galliano was moved across from Givenchy to take over at France’s oldest and most lucrative fashion house, Christian Dior, freeing up Givenchy for McQueen. It is a giant publicity coup, masterminded by Bernard Arnault, president of the LVMH Group which owns not only Dior and Givenchy but also Louis Vuitton, Moet Hennessey, Kenzo, Christian Lacroix and the recently acquired John Galliano label.

By all accounts, McQueen was offered the job, and the six-figure salary that goes with it, weeks ago. Any previous doubt surrounding his appointment stemmed from the fact that he might just turn it down. Throughout last week representatives from Givenchy and Dior were refusing to comment which merely fuelled speculation.

In the middle of all this, McQueen turned up unexpectedly in Paris and took a front row seat in the full glare of some 2,000 journalists. By the weekend he had fled back to London, overwhelmed, rather sweetly, by the attention. He has every reason to feel overcome. It is, without doubt, the most unlikely appointment in fashion history. The house of Givenchy, which had Audrey Hepburn as its muse, is synonymous with genteel elegance and exquisitely refined good taste. McQueen, by contrast, is more than happy to admit to yob status.

If the appointment of Galliano three seasons ago was unprecedented, McQueen’s is positively anarchic. While he is certainly the most talented designer to come out of London since Galliano, he has only designed eight collections (at Givenchy he would be responsible for 10 a year), taking their often twisted inspiration from subjects as unpalatable as rape, car crash and famine victims. In the highland rape collection, the final decorative touch was tampon strings dangling from crotches of McQueen’s signature bumster trousers. Not only is he far from experienced, his ideology is a million miles from that of the moneyed and mannered couture customer for whom he will be catering.

French fashion historian Katell Le Bourhis, who has known McQueen for some years, is unsurprised, however. “He is certainly one of the strongest designers to emerge in the last four years. He is a very powerful and original force and one with enormous creative potential.”

To try to recreate the work of the great couturiers such as Coco Chanel and Hubert de Givenchy, “to design some kind of neo-Givenchy”, would be a mistake, she says. Put a very young designer into a very old couture house, however, and give him the backing and support of the atelier and you enable him to go on to great things.

From an East End family of cab drivers (father, uncle and sister), McQueen left school at 16 with one 0-level and one A-level, both in art, and earnt his keep collecting dirty glasses in a Stratford pub, an area renowned for its grim council estates and vigorous National Front activity.

Much to the amusement of his hard-nut mates, he spent his days dreamily drawing frocks for a modern-day Cinderella. “They got used to it in the end,” he says. Then, in 1986, he saw a TV news report about the lack of apprentices on Savile Row and made straight for royal tailors, Anderson & Sheppard. He was offered a job on the spot. Soon he was wreaking his infamous havoc, as he once proudly proclaimed: “Without him knowing it, the Prince of Wales has worn a jacket with ‘I’m a c***’ written on the front of it.”

From there he went on to work with London-based designer Koji Tatsuno, and later for Romeo Gigli in Milan. After working as a pattern cutter for Gigli for nine months, he grew restless. “Throwing up a good wage” as he has put it, he moved back to London and completed a fashion MA at Central St Martins, Galliano’s Alma Mater. He graduated three years ago and the rest, as they say, is history.

Louise Wilson, head of MA fashion at St Martins and one of his tutors, maintains that the shock tactics on the McQueen catwalk are nothing more than dramatic conceits. Only a matter of weeks ago at London fashion week he sent out a black model in manacles, her wrists and ankles attached to a rusty metal frame so she could barely walk. This should not, Wilson says, detract from his creative genius. She is not alone in so thinking. His considerable tailoring abilities, in particular, delight fashion pundits the world over.

Amy de la Hay, curator of contemporary fashion at the V&A, which already owns several of McQueen’s designs, is equally thrilled. “History has come full circle,” she says. “Until the 1960s, British fashion designers struggled to assert their identity as creative forces because Paris and fashion were considered synonymous. Now, Paris is coming to Britain for an injection of creative talent.”

But the British fashion industry could, in the end, lose out, she says. “It’s a shame that Britain lacks the infrastructure to fully exploit and retain the talents of iconoclastic, innovative designers such as Alexander McQueen,” she says.

Others voice doubts, worrying that McQueen and Galliano are pawns in a sophisticated publicity stunt. Only recently McQueen told the Telegraph magazine: “I’m a working class kid. I stick to my working class roots and that’s what gets me the press. At the end of the day, although I’m quite intelligent, I’m still quite an oik.”

Whether this equips him to head a highly formal atelier of around 60 people is another matter. Certainly Galliano has paved the way. He spent his first months at Givenchy making friends, as he put it, with the ladies and gentlemen of the atelier, breaking protocol by eating with them in the cafe and insisting they call him John.

With the backing of LVMH, the possibilities for McQueen are endless. “Couture is beyond beyond,” he says. “It is where the dreams of your life in fashion become a reality.”

Certainly, it is a measure of the generosity and confidence of the French fashion establishment that it allows English designers to take over at two of the country’s greatest couture houses.

“In France, fashion is like football,” Le Bourhis says. “Everyone comments on it. Even the taxi drivers are interested in what’s going on at Givenchy or Dior.”

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