Alexander McQueen Is Remembered

Sarah Jessica Parker, Kate Moss, Stella McCartney and Naomi Campbell attended a memorial service at St. Paul’s Cathedral in London, England for fashion designer (Lee) Alexander McQueen.

Anna Wintour spoke at the private service A Service of Thanksgiving for the Life of Alexander McQueen where she said:

“There was no containing his contradictions,” [he was a]“complex and gifted young man, born not far from here, who as a child used to sit on the roof of his tower block and watch the birds circling overhead.”

The London Community Gospel Choir led the congregation in Amazing Grace during which a collection was taken up in aid of the Terrence Higgins Trust, the Blue Cross and Battersea Dogs and Cats Home. Bjork sang a haunting version of Gloomy Sunday (the Billie Holiday song about contemplating suicide).

Friends told stories of the iconic fashion desire and sang hymns. The hour-long service ended with:

Milliner Philip Treacy, McQueen’s nephew, and McQueen’s CEO, Jonathan Akeroyd, led final prayers of intercession in which they also remembered the designer’s mother Joyce, who died a week before her son, and his late friend Isabella Blow. As they did so, the sun sliced through the windows of the great dome above, throwing shafts of sunlight on to the speakers below. It was just the kind of wordless symbolism in which McQueen used to specialise.

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Photos: Daniel Deme/Craig Harris/WENN