Her approval, so plainly and freely given (his father, Ronald, was a different matter), was essential to Mr. McQueen, a gay man and the youngest of six, but it alone did not explain the enormous self-belief, the mental speed, the bursting ideas — which were present at the start. “You almost became addicted to him somehow,” Ms. Burton said later, recalling drafty mornings in Hoxton Square (she, in a coat, sitting on a too-low stool at the secondhand cutting table, Ms. Verkade on the phone hustling money, a dog afoot) and the pride as Mr. McQueen, chubby then, showed them five things he had made overnight. “It was almost like the old machine makers.”

Image Credit... David Bailey (2002)

SUCH feeling for beauty, for greatness, for never being quite happy, undoubtedly had its roots in his relationship with his mother and with another woman, Isabella Blow, the alarming-looking stylist-aristocrat whose effect was like an umbrella opening in a phone booth — but the perfect umbrella in finest silk.

Ms. Blow, with her red carnation mouth, liked to talk dirty to Mr. McQueen, and he to her. She also gave him friendship, books, approval. “Isabella could make it all O.K. in an instant,” the milliner Philip Treacy said. “She’d never say to Alexander, ‘Nice dress.’ She would say, ‘Oh my God, I love it.’ ” When she died, in 2007, taking her own life — the tragedy of Ms. Blow was that in spite of her gift of hope in others she was convinced she had no future — people said that Mr. McQueen had let her down. He didn’t bother to correct the record until last summer, for as Mr. Leane said, “She was on his mind a lot.” Later, when he met with someone making a film about her life, he broke down sobbing.

Ms. Verkade said: “He was somebody who talked about the future all the time. He was in the office talking about the show, the music, booking a holiday.” Indeed, in the last three years, since the show that he and Mr. Treacy dedicated to Ms. Blow, Mr. McQueen seemed to reach a real point of clarity. He and Mr. Leane traveled to India, from which came the jewel-like “Girl Who Lived in The Tree” collection. (Ms. Burton remembered getting text messages from him in the middle of the night describing colors to be dyed. “That’s how he worked.”) And he moved out of a big house he owned in East London, ending yet another relationship, and into a rental flat in Mayfair, which had the advantage of being central.

At the New Year, Mr. McQueen was skiing in Val-d’Isère, France, with Annabelle Neilson and two other friends. A wild thing, with a small body and dark eyes, Ms. Neilson and Mr. McQueen were in a sense well matched. He liked familiarity amongst those he loved, he liked home, and indeed he often took vacations with his sisters and their children. Ms. Neilson recognized that need for intimacy and encouraged it, perhaps beyond proportion. She said, “I was sort of married to a gay man.”

Mr. McQueen, though — and this was so like him — chose to commemorate their bond by having two pieces of jewelry made, in the shape of an L and an A, in diamonds with a single black stone indicating a black heart.