When Alexander McQueen committed suicide in 2010, I felt selfishly angry and disappointed: no, you cannot die! Not now, when I cannot yet afford your clothes! This was quickly followed by embarrassment and a genuine sadness, but a bit of that horrible initial reaction remains with me still.

I don’t remember when or how I first saw his work – it must have been at some point in the end of the nineties, as my interest in fashion was already serious by then and McQueen would have been impossible to miss. By the time of the The Widows of Culloden, I was already an adoring fan and he remains my favourite designer to this day.

McQueen’s work ticked so many boxes for me: he was an impossibly skilled and radical tailor; his work was always deeply informed by history and cultures of the world; his shapes were dramatic, his materials exquisite; he liked his women strong and his romanticism dark. Before McQueen, I thought I despised everything romantic, while in fact it was just the idea of the romantic as something pink or involving a mandatory bouquet or roses that I hated. The romance of highlands, of castles in ruins, of torn lace and feathered headdresses, of fallen empires and faded silks from Japan – THIS was the sort of romance I instantly identified with. But McQueen wasn’t just a romantic, he was also fiercely modern and slightly perverse, a friend of the streets and the outsiders. A contradictory, inspired bundle of talent and ambition.

It’s impossible to pick a favourite piece or show, although I have a slight preference for his lighter ones: his last, unfinished collection of golden feathers and pure beauty; the opulence and sense of adventure in The Girl Who Lived in the Tree and the most romantic of them all, Sarabande. It’s all relative, of course, and his light was never without darkness. I do not want to repeat silly cliches about true art only coming from suffering, but in case of McQueen, I do think that his most universally beautiful creations reach that level of beauty because they balance on the edge of being something else entirely. While The Widows of Culloden was a lovely, wearable collection (including one of my all-time favourite dresses, on the first picture above), it was inspired by what he called the genocide of his Scottish ancestors. There was always an element of uncomfortableness in his shows, it was just the degree that varied.

It is difficult to capture or to explain a genius, but the Savage Beauty exhibition in Victoria & Albert comes close. I saw it yesterday and if you are in London before 2 August, please go and see it. Tickets are difficult to come by, but I’m sure you can think of something. Sell a kidney. It’s worth it.