What I do is look at ancient African tribes, and the way they dress. The rituals of how they dress. . . . There's a lot of tribalism in the collections.

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

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.

You can only go forward by making mistakes. I'm twenty-seven, not fifty-seven. I'm not Givenchy, I'm 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.

Clothes and jewellery should be startling, individual.

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.