the class-o-matic

The fashion world's leading voices have paid tribute to the outlandish avant-garde "genius" of Alexander McQueen, the British designer found dead at home in London, after an apparent suicide.

McQueen's death comes just over a week after his mother, Joyce, died and almost three years since his close friend and style guru, Isabella Blow, committed suicide.

"He was an imaginative designer and a show-stopper," said the powerful head of the Paris couture federation, Didier Grumbach, of a designer ready to court controversy with "bumster" trousers and ripped clothes, or to send stuffed animals or an amputee model out on the catwalk.

Alexander McQueen (16 March 1969 – 11 February 2010) RIP