Alexander McQueen launches affordable line

Alexander McQueen may be considered the bad boy of the fashion pack, but aside from his beautiful and high-end creations, he is a savvy businessman.

McQueen knows that what is commercial is not always cutting edge or magazine-worthy. And he also knows that his signature detailing can be easily translated from couture to high street and be successful without hurting his mainline namesake.

While some designers tend to recoil from the concept of a diffusion range (they can be an uncomfortable reminder that a fashion designer is not an artist but a manufacturer of commercial goods) Alexander McQueen this week joined the growing number of designers who are launching cheaper lines when he showed his new brand, McQ in Milan.

"McQueen does not want it to be avant garde; McQ is supposed to be more commercial," said his spokesman in IHT.

The collection will go into stores around the world this summer and prices range from £35 for T-shirts to £350 for lined leather bomber jackets. Instead of just being jeans and T-shirts, the collection is a clever, if somewhat watered down, run-through of McQueen's best known pieces.

Inspired by 60s bikers, there are some excellent fitted leather jackets, a beautiful and very McQueen dress with body swooping seams and heavy stitching up the front, and dramatic capes for women and particularly bold men.

McQueen will be hoping for the kind of success Marc Jacobs has had with his diffusion line, Marc by Marc Jacobs, which has brought the American designer to a wider audience and is one of the most popular lines in department stores around the world, including Harvey Nichols and Selfridges. McQueen's clothes have always had youth appeal, so to make them more affordable to a younger audience makes obvious commercial sense.

McQueen adds another ready-to-wear collection

British designer Alexander McQueen is adding a second ready-to-wear collection, called McQ, to his stable of creations. The new collection will launch in the fall of 2006.

Having just unveiled a footwear line for Puma in September, McQueen seems unstoppable, although this may have something to do with the fact that parent company Gucci Group is applying pressure on its smaller brands, including Stella McCartney, to turn a profit by 2007. McCartney will launch her own new venture, a limited collection for high street chain H&M, later this week.

The new denim-based brand, produced by Italian company SINV SpA, will be for both men and women and will include accessories. “The focus of this collection will be younger and more renegade, but always signature McQueen,” said the designer in a statement last week. “This partnership will add a new and inspiring dimension to the McQueen world.”

The new McQueen collection will hit 600 shops, including Harvey Nichols and Neiman Marcus but not the McQueen flagships in New York, Milan and London, in June 2006. Prices will range from £495 for selected knitwear to £60 for a T-shirt.
SINV will produce and distribute the collection under a five-year licensing agreement. The Italian company has similar contracts for See by Chloé, DKNY Jeans, Krizia Jeans and Moschino Jeans. SINV generates a turnover of €136 million (£92 million).

“This new license integrates perfectly with the SINV portfolio and boosts our presence in the high quality prêt-a-porter industry,” SINV chief executive Massimo Braglia told the FT.

www.alexandermcqueen.com
7 November 2005

Alexander McQueen to launch diffusion denim range

Alexander McQueen is expanding his brand to include a denim collection for both men and women..The designer, who in September also unveiled a footwear line for Puma, will launch a second ready-to-wear collection called McQ – Alexander McQueen for fall 2006.
"The focus of this collection will be younger and more renegade, but always signature McQueen," the designer said in the statement. "This partnership will add a new and inspiring dimension to the McQueen world."

The new rtw line comes hot on the rubber heels of McQueen's new collaboration with Puma. The Alexander McQueen Puma line will launch in 200 to 250 stores worldwide in January, including McQueen's flagships in London, New York and Milan.
McQueen parent Gucci Group has strongly encouraged its smaller brands to build their businesses by striking deals with outside companies. Gucci wants the brands, which also include Stella McCartney and Balenciaga, to be profitable by 2007.
Later this week, McCartney will unveil a limited-edition capsule collection for H&M. She also has a successful performance sportswear line for Adidas.

The new McQueen line will hit 600 shop floors worldwide in June. A McQueen spokesman said the stores that will carry the line will include Harvey Nichols, but not the McQueen flagship London. Prices will range from 495 pounds to 60 pounds for a T-shirt.
The collection will include denim jeans, jackets, trenches and miniskirts with special treatments and washes. It will also include knitwear, T-shirts, woolen coats and trousers made from washed and overdyed cottons.

www.alexandermcqueen.com
7 November 2005

New scent for McQueen

Designer Alexander McQueen is introducing a new perfume this fall, entitled "My Queen". Tongue in cheek, maybe, but also a reference to how a woman should feel like a queen. According to YSL Beaute, developers of the scent, the perfume is designed to evoke four major responses: "marvelous", "dazzling", "mysterious" and "intoxicating". These categories also represent four different fragrance sets, which together make up the scent My Queen.

Alexandra Illouz, the product mananger for Alexander McQueen at YSL Beaute, said: "We were testing four different fragrance sets - Marvelous, Dazzling, Mysterious, and Intoxicating - before developing My Queen. These four sets have completely different ingredients and aromas. Finally, My Queen - as a final product- combines everything."

Chantal Roos, president of YSL Beaute, said at a press preview last week: "He designed everything, from the vision of My Queen fragrance to the adverstising visual. McQueen sees the extraordinary when we see the ordinary. Everything that he designed was based on his inspirations and his imaginationa of mystery and secret. Even the colour violet (used in the bottle) gives me a very deep feeling of a mysterious Queen."

McQueen said: " I want to create a fragrance for a Queen, who is poweful and mysterious all at once, familiar and distant, assertive and sensitive, luminous and secretive. (It) must be a fragrance like the emotion a Queen arouses - like her, elegant and indefinable, changing with her skin, her mood, her fancy. A fragrance is like her, ceaselessly transforming herself and alwasy ruling over her desires."

The new scent will be cast in a lower price range than perfumes by Chanel and Christian Dior. "We were trying to set the price not too high, like Chanel or Christian Dior," said Illouz. "My Queen is the middle range of the fine products, so everyone can afford it." At GBP 28,40 for 35 ml Eau de Parfum, anyone can feel like a Queen.

www.alexandermcqueen.com
4 July 2005

Lord of the Flies

Alexander McQueen has done it again. He has managed to push the boundaries and find unuaul inspiration in a piece of literature. Who knew that when we were struggling through compulsary Willian Golding's 'Lord of the flies' at school, it would serve as inspiration for a cutting-edge designer? But it did. For his spring/summer 2006 collection in Milan, McQueen played out the story on the catwalk brilliantly.

The models started the show looking crisp and clean cut in shirtsleeves, white suits, colourful pinstripes and funky school ties. They donned school caps, bermuda shorts and knee-high socks. The look screamed 'Hoorah Henry', 'Righty-ho, old chap'. However, the disintegration of civilization started to seep through a third of the way through the show. The jackets began showing tears, revealing bare skin. The trousers shrunk to three-quarter length and shorts. School ties were tied around the waist to hold up the trousers - implying weight loss on a deserted island - and tank tops replaced dress shirts.

The style took an eventual turn in favour of tribal prints and evolved into downright primal fashion. Feathers galore, bright coloured body paint and earthy tones transformed the models into raw, exotic-looking creatures. The show culminated in darkness; the models moved down the runway like rapacious birds of prey, sporting black shiny suits, dark feathered capes and black facial paint. Civilization had been fully abandoned in favour of survival.

30 June 2005

McQueen Reveals Autumn Menswear Collection

Alexander McQueen unveiled his autumn 04 menswear collection with a static presentation at the opening of Milan's Fashion Week. McQueen is current favourite to take over the reins as creative director of Gucci Group's Yves Saint Laurent label when current creative director Tom Ford leaves in April.

www.alexandermcqueen.com
21 January 2004

McQueen To Make Cutting Edge Profits For Gucci

Enfant terrible Alexander McQueen is part of the Gucci strategy to buy up edgy young companies to try and rev up their growth. In a fast-paced fashion world and declining sales, the luxury group is aiming to create economies of scale and tap into a saleable creativity.

But is that strategy being put to a tough test with Gucci's gamble on McQueen. The company has struggled to turn around even established brands, including Yves Saint. Laurent, which it took control of in 1999. Now, 34 year-old McQueen must show that he can make clothes that people will buy at the same time he is preserving the eccentricity that originally attracted Gucci.

While retailers say there is a market for cutting-edge creativity, McQueen himself has cited he doesn't want to see two million people wearing the latest McQueen shoes or bag of the season. Creativity may be important, but Gucci is much more business orientated than a personal charity and McQueen's flamboyant runway collections now include a wider commercial collection to appeal to a bigger market.

And while Gucci is recovering from a sluggish world economy and the tourism slump, McQueen is attending budget meetings and studying weekly sales reports. It is obvious that McQueen's association with Gucci is much happier than his previous one with LVMH. Gucci allows him to be more experimental and both sides seem esteemed to compromise.

www.alexandermcqueen.com
www.guccigroup.com
30 September 2003

Alexander McQueen launches first perfume: Kingdom

The beauty arm of Gucci group YSL Beauté has launched the first product from its new promising brands division. Kingdom, a female fragrance under the name of the British designer Alexander McQueen, will be available in stores worldwide on March 17. A very special date, since it’s McQueen’s birthday that day.

The scent, created by Jacques Cavallier of Firmenich (also the creator of Poeme, the successful fragrance from Lancome), is a rich blend of bergamot, mandarin, neroli, cumin, rose, vanilla and myrrh. The bottle, created to look like a heart, is made of ruby-colored glass encased in a stainless steal half shell. Patrick Veillet designed it in collaboration with McQueen.

YSL Beauté reinforces the romantic and literary themes of the perfume with an outer packaging of white paper and a red seal, reminiscent of a love letter. An inscription of the first line of the poem ‘Kingdom’, by US poet Jorie Graham, also features on the carton. The new emerging brands division also plans to launch fragrances under the Ermenegildo Zegna and Stella McCartney names.

www.alexandermcqueen.com
www.guccigroup.com
January 17, 2003