95 Alexander McQueen Quotes on Style and Fashion

Alexander McQueen, a British designer, was famous for his innovative clothing and remarkable fashion shows.

Born in London in 1969, he grew up as the youngest of six, with a cab driver father and a teacher/genealogist mother.

At 16, he started tailoring, even for famous personalities like Prince Charles.

Later, he studied fashion at Central Saint Martins, where a stylist named Isabella Blow was impressed by his work.

Alexander McQueen

In 1992, his “bumster” trousers got him media attention. By 1996, he became the head designer for Givenchy.

McQueen’s designs often had dark, edgy themes. He dressed celebrities, including Madonna and David Bowie.

In 2000, Gucci bought a majority stake in his brand, but he remained in charge creatively. McQueen tragically took his own life in 2010.

A 2011 exhibit of his work at the Metropolitan Museum of Art set attendance records and a documentary about him was released in 2018.

Below is a top collection of quotes by Alexander McQueen.


Best Alexander McQueen Quotes

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You can only go forward by making mistakes. ~ Alexander McQueen.

Women should look like women. A piece of cardboard has no sexuality. ~ Alexander McQueen.

There’s beauty in anger, and anger for me is a passion. ~ Alexander McQueen.

Give me time and I’ll give you a revolution. ~ Alexander McQueen.

I feel more Scottish than Norman. ~ Alexander McQueen.

You find a lot of ideas from my shows in adverts now. I find it a compliment. ~ Alexander McQueen.

It needs to connect with the earth. Things that are processed and reprocessed lose their substance. ~ Alexander McQueen.

I think there is beauty in everything. What ‘normal’ people would perceive as ugly, I can usually see something of beauty in it. ~ Alexander McQueen.

Sting’s my ideal man, because he’s a real man. ~ Alexander McQueen.

It’s good to know where you come from. It makes you what you are today. It’s DNA, it’s in your blood. ~ Alexander McQueen.

I think the idea of mixing luxury and mass-market fashion is very modern, very now – no one wears head-to-toe designer anymore. ~ Alexander McQueen.

It’s almost like putting armor on a woman. It’s a very psychological way of dressing. ~ Alexander McQueen.

I’m 40 now, but I want this to be a company that lives way beyond me, and I believe that customers are more important to making that happen than press. When I’m dead, hopefully this house will still be going. On a spaceship. Hopping up and down above earth. ~ Alexander McQueen.

I’m the pink sheep in the family. ~ Alexander McQueen.

I’m not big on women looking naïve. ~ Alexander McQueen.

I’m mad in the front of my mind, but business-minded in the back. ~ Alexander McQueen.

My relationships with producers or photographers – these are relationships that took years. ~ Alexander McQueen.

I always wanted to be a designer. I read books on fashion from the age of 12. ~ Alexander McQueen.

When you see a woman in my clothes, you want to know more about them. To me, that is what distinguishes good designers from bad designers. ~ Alexander McQueen.

I’ve had good times; I’ve had bad times. ~ Alexander McQueen.

I am a melancholy type of person. ~ Alexander McQueen.

Rap music’s been around for too long now to be inspirational. The words are, but the music isn’t. ~ Alexander McQueen.

I want to empower women. ~ Alexander McQueen.

There is a hidden agenda in the fragility of romance. ~ Alexander McQueen.

For people who know McQueen, there is always an underlying message. It’s usually only the intellectual ones who understand what’s going on in what I do. ~ Alexander McQueen.

I think I should be a president. President of the United States. ~ Alexander McQueen.

You can only go forward by making mistakes. I’m twenty-seven, not fifty-seven. I’m not Givenchy, I’m Alexander McQueen. ~ Alexander McQueen.

The police need to come down to street level. ~ Alexander McQueen.

It’s not my vision when I cover a woman’s face with a chador. I got the idea from a ‘National Geographic’ photo. I’m just showing their plight in the world. ~ Alexander McQueen.

I work with people I admire and respect. It’s never because of who they are. ~ Alexander McQueen.

People find my things sometimes aggressive. But I don’t see it as aggressive. I see it as romantic, dealing with a dark side of personality. ~ Alexander McQueen.

Top Alexander McQueen Quotes

There has to be a balance between your mental satisfaction and the financial needs of your company. ~ Alexander McQueen.

I like the idea of infiltrating an area that is not really exposed to me or my work. ~ Alexander McQueen.

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Fame should be left to the film stars. ~ Alexander McQueen.

I oscillate between life and death, happiness and sadness, good and evil. ~ Alexander McQueen.

I find beauty in the grotesque, like most artists. ~ Alexander McQueen.

You’ve got to know the rules to break them. ~ Alexander McQueen.

I’m interested in designing for posterity. ~ Alexander McQueen.

When you see a woman wearing McQueen, there’s a certain hardness to the clothes that makes her look powerful. It kind of fends people off. ~ Alexander McQueen.

I spent a long time learning how to construct clothes, which is important to do before you can deconstruct them. ~ Alexander McQueen.

Birds in flight fascinate me. I admire eagles and falcons. I’m inspired by a feather but also its color, its graphics, its weightlessness and its engineering. It’s so elaborate. In fact I try and transpose the beauty of a bird to women. ~ Alexander McQueen.

There are only a handful of designers that influence other designers, and I have to keep one step ahead of the game. ~ Alexander McQueen.

Famous Alexander McQueen Quotes

There comes a time in your life when you focus solely on what you believe is right, regardless of what everybody else is doing. ~ Alexander McQueen.

You can get insular with fashion. ~ Alexander McQueen.

There is no better designer than nature. ~ Alexander McQueen.

If you’re lucky enough to use something you see in a dream, it is purely original. It’s not in the world – it’s in your head. I think that is amazing. ~ Alexander McQueen.

There is no way back for me now, I’m going to take you on journeys you’ve never dreamed possible. ~ Alexander McQueen.

Fashion is self confident and fearless. ~ Alexander McQueen.

Now I design what I want to wear, and it works that way. ~ Alexander McQueen.

Some couture collections have everything including the kitchen sink! Everything gets thrown on to make it look expensive. ~ Alexander McQueen.

I’m about what goes through people’s minds. The stuff that people don’t want to admit or face up to. The shows are about what’s buried in people’s psyches. ~ Alexander McQueen.

People don’t want to see clothes, they want to see something that fuels the imagination. ~ Alexander McQueen.

Fashion should be a form of escapism, and not a form of imprisonment. ~ Alexander McQueen.

Ultimate Alexander McQueen Quotes

I was never a big networker, but I was a spin doctor, all those shock shows, that’s how I got my first backers. But fashion’s a scary industry to be in, especially if you’ve not grown up with it. ~ Alexander McQueen.

Really, what I’m aiming for is world domination! ~ Alexander McQueen.

I like the concept of dressing people. I used to not care whether people bought the clothes or not, but I kind of like it now. I wouldn’t label that commercialism; it’s more like I do this work because I want people to wear it. ~ Alexander McQueen.

Menswear is about subtlety. It’s about good style and good taste. ~ Alexander McQueen.

I find beauty in the grotesque, like most artists. I have to force people to look at things. ~ Alexander McQueen.

I want people to be afraid of the women I dress. ~ Alexander McQueen.

I used flowers because they die. My mood was darkly romantic at the time. ~ Alexander McQueen.

When I’m dead and gone, people will know that the twenty-first century was started by Alexander McQueen. ~ Alexander McQueen.

I don’t want to be too proud, but I have a good personal style. ~ Alexander McQueen.

I think there is beauty in everything. ~ Alexander McQueen.

As a designer, you’ve always got to push yourself forward; you’ve always got to keep up with the trends or make your own trends. That’s what I do. ~ Alexander McQueen.

For a long time I was looking for my perfect equilibrium, my mojo. And now I think I’m getting there: I’ve found my customer, my silhouette, my cut. ~ Alexander McQueen.

I don’t want to do a cocktail party. I’d rather people left my shows and vomited. ~ Alexander McQueen.

I like things to be modern and still have a bit of tradition. ~ Alexander McQueen.

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If you’re an open book, there’s no allure. ~ Alexander McQueen.

There is something sinister, something quite biographical about what I do – but that part is for me. It’s my personal business. I think there is a lot of romance, melancholy. There’s a sadness to it, but there’s romance in sadness. I suppose I am a very melancholy person. ~ Alexander McQueen.

The world needs fantasy, not reality. We have enough reality today. ~ Alexander McQueen.

I just want to be a wallflower. Nondescript. Just not anything. I don’t want to see me. ~ Alexander McQueen.

There’s blood beneath every layer of skin. ~ Alexander McQueen.

Inspiring Alexander McQueen Quotes

I hate it when people romanticize Scotland. ~ Alexander McQueen.

I never look at other people’s work. My mind has to be completely focused on my own illusions. ~ Alexander McQueen.

I can design a collection in a day and I always do, cause I’ve always got a load of Italians on my back, moaning that it’s late. ~ Alexander McQueen.

When a woman gets dressed up to go out at night, she wants to give 50% away, and hold the rest back. If you’re an open book, there’s no allure. ~ Alexander McQueen.

Style is not about the clothes, it’s about the individual. ~ Alexander McQueen.

It’s a new era in fashion – there are no rules. It’s all about the individual and personal style, wearing high-end, low-end, classic labels, and up-and-coming designers all together. ~ Alexander McQueen.

I came to terms with not fitting in a long time ago. I never really fitted in. I don’t want to fit in. And now people are buying into that. ~ Alexander McQueen.

I’m prepared to forget about money if it affects my creativity because, remember, I started off with nothing. And I can do that again. ~ Alexander McQueen.

I can’t get sucked into that celebrity thing, because I think it’s just crass. ~ Alexander McQueen.

Clothes and jewelry should be startling, individual. ~ Alexander McQueen.

I was three years old when I started drawing. I did it all my life. ~ Alexander McQueen.

I come from a different era and I design clothes for our era. I think of people I want to dress when I design. ~ Alexander McQueen.

You’ve got to know the rules to break them. That’s what I’m here for, to demolish the rules but to keep the tradition. ~ Alexander McQueen.

For me, what I do is an artistic expression which is channeled through me. Fashion is just the medium. ~ Alexander McQueen.

Of course I make mistakes. I’m human. If I didn’t make mistakes, I’d never learn. You can only go forward by making mistakes. ~ Alexander McQueen.

I am married to work. ~ Alexander McQueen.

The turnover of fashion is just so quick and so throwaway, and I think that is a big part of the problem. There is no longevity. ~ Alexander McQueen.

You can hide so much behind theatrics, and I don’t need to do that any more. ~ Alexander McQueen.

I believe in that one-on-one sell. I don’t really believe in flooding the market with loads of goods that don’t mean much, and you lose your identity. ~ Alexander McQueen.

It’s the ugly things I notice more, because other people tend to ignore the ugly things. ~ Alexander McQueen.

I find beauty in melancholy. ~ Alexander McQueen.

British fashion is self confident and fearless. It refuses to bow to commerce, thus generating a constant flow of new ideas whilst drawing in British heritage. ~ Alexander McQueen.

If you ask any lady they want to be taller, they want to be slimmer, you know, and they want a waist. I’m not here to make people look like a sack of potatoes. ~ Alexander McQueen.


So these were the 95 top Alexander McQueen quotes on fashion, lifestyle and style statement.

If you like these quotes and sayings, then you can also read my other posts on Hank Williams quotes and Hank Williams Jr. quotes.

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Chandan Negi
Chandan Negi

I’m the Founder of Internet Pillar - I love sharing quotes and motivational content to inspire and motivate people - #quotes #motivation #internetpillar