“My family keeps me grounded,” Lee Alexander McQueen says in the documentary “McQueen.”
The film, directed by Ian Bonhôte and written and codirected by Peter Ettedgui, opens in New York and Los Angeles today. Among those interviewed for the documentary was Janet McQueen, the eldest of the designer’s siblings. While in New York for the film’s premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival in April, Janet sat for a chat with WWD, along with Anne McQueen, her aunt through marriage, there for moral support and to interject a word here or there when Janet turned tentative.
Janet called the film “a brilliant, brilliant portrait of Lee.” To this day she finds the depth of her brother’s fame and his place in fashion history difficult to grasp; families are like that. “I mean, I just can’t get my head around it,” she said, while still acknowledging his genius. “You know with some people, they are born to do something amazing.”
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Fifteen years Lee’s senior, Janet figures prominently in the designer’s story, as a sister he loved dearly to the end and as the unknowing wife of the man who molested him when he was a child. “I didn’t know for years and years because Lee didn’t want…”
“He didn’t divulge it,” Anne interjected.
“No, he didn’t divulge it,” Janet continued. “And I don’t think he wanted me to know….And then it was about six years before Lee passed away that I actually was told.” She added that the perpetrator, at whose hands she also suffered abuse, died in 1984, and that, “I don’t even like to call him my first husband.”
Janet knew that in agreeing to an interview, the topic would come up: “You asked and I’m going to be truthful,” she said. Truthful yet cautious. She chose her words carefully, a gentle “I’d rather not say,” coming in response to seeming innocuous queries. For example, she noted that she once knew most of McQueen’s friends interviewed for the film, but had long since fallen out of touch, until an e-mail from Sebastian Pons about a year ago. Did he e-mail about the film or something else? “It was personal, so I’d rather not say, thank you.”
Still, Janet clearly enjoys the happy memories. Favorite runway shows? Too hard to choose, although she recalls with pride that one was dedicated “to my sisters.” “Did I tell you that?” she asks, glancing at Anne. She hadn’t.
Janet acknowledged that even now, nearly a decade after McQueen’s death, London cabbies (she once drove a cab) remain proud that a cab driver’s son achieved such heights. And she was ready to set straight some misconceptions, particularly about Lee’s damaged relationship with Isabella Blow, often credited with “discovering” him, once he was hired by Givenchy. “I think what people don’t know is that — I mean, Lee loved Isabella. And he actually did finance certain things, I think, to care for Isabella,” Janet said. “Lee wasn’t the type of person that would share out what he’d done for people. But there are some nice stories out there where Lee actually did nice things for people, and other people are not aware of it because he wasn’t the type to sort of say these things.”
Janet recalled a brother with a soft spot for the underdog, or anyone who might feel marginalized in a particular situation. “If he walked into a room and there was someone sitting in a corner and no one was talking to that person and there was lots of people there, he wouldn’t ignore [the loner],” she offered. “He’d make sure that they were looked after because he never liked to see that. He properly felt that a lot himself.”
When reminded of the segment in the film that highlighted McQueen’s interest in meeting Catherine de Londres, the tailoring chief at Givenchy, who had made a spectacular jacket, and his insistence on eating lunch with the atelier, she declared the behavior “very Lee.”
Today, the McQueen family has no connection with the Alexander McQueen business save one — Sarah Burton. McQueen’s one-time intern has become the keeper of his legacy and a great designer in her own right. “She is the person that’s kept the link with the family,” Janet noted. “She is very lovely. She absolutely adored Lee. I don’t really like talking about other people in a certain way because I think they need their privacy and it’s not up to me…but she has been exceptionally good to Lee’s direct family.”
Asked what she would like people to know about Lee, Janet didn’t hesitate. “There’s so many things because he was so complex, he was so many different things,” she mused. “The first thing is he was really caring in his nature. He didn’t always show that side of him. I think what showed was he wanted people to actually dislike him. I think that was a barrier he kept up. But he was so caring.”
As for his work, despite McQueen’s remarkable fashion legacy, Janet believes that creatively, he was far from finished. “When you see some of the clothes, it was just the tip of the iceberg. I think he had so much more to give,” she said.
At the end of the day, however, what might have been professionally is hardly the greatest loss. “It’s about Lee not being here anymore, my brother,” Janet said. “It’s simply we miss him. We all miss him every day. He was such a big part of our lives.”