US Edition THE Italian fashion group Gucci has bought 51 per cent of the most avant-garde label in London, Alexander McQueen, for an undisclosed sum in a manoeuvre that may stir up trouble in the fashion world.
The deal means McQueen will be working for both the French fashion stable of Louis Vuitton Moet Hennessy - where he designs for the house of Givenchy - and the Gucci Group NV, its chief rival.
Relations between the fashion empires have been fractious ever since the French group built up a stake in Gucci. Moreover, it is an open secret that McQueen has wanted to terminate his contract with Givenchy, which is due to expire next October.
He taunts his French employers in the current issue of the arts magazine, Arena: "Fire me! Cos that's what I wanted anyway." When asked yesterday whether it was safe to assume he was on course to work out his time, a Givenchy spokesman said: "I wouldn't assume anything."
However, a spokesman for McQueen in London said yesterday that the designer was due in Paris tomorrow to continue working on the Givenchy haute couture collection which will be presented next month.
A Gucci press statement issued shortly after its board approved the McQueen deal at 8am yesterday made an obvious reference to McQueen's current contractual obligations with Givenchy. It said: "This relationship will become exclusive upon the expiry in October 2001 of his other current creative responsibilites."
LVMH launched a lawsuit against Gucci last week over an alleged secret grant of share options, while Gucci has retaliated by suing LVMH for criminal defamation in the French courts.
Now, by poaching McQueen from under his nose, Domenico De Sole, president of Gucci, appears to have put one over Bernard Arnault, the French tycoon who heads LVMH and appointed the feisty young designer as the couturier for Givenchy in 1996.
McQueen, 31, from the East End, is a controversial and at times disturbing designer. He invented "bumsters" and has twice been named the British Designer of the Year.
Whatever the outcome of his Parisian career, marked by brilliant international publicity worth millions of pounds if not the equivalent in sales, McQueen's new alliance with Gucci is almost certain to establish the young designer as Britain's newest fashion multi-millionaire.
McQueen, who now holds the balance of 49 per cent of his company, will retain 100 per cent creative control in a long-term arrangement as creative director of the new business, effective immediately. McQueen stated: "My label and the future of Alexander McQueen are incredibly important to me and I believe this partnership will prove a great success."
He has an ideal role model in Tom Ford, creative director for both Gucci and another label in its empire, Yves Saint Laurent. Ford's stake in Gucci, which has a projected revenue of £1.5 billion this year, was last week estimated to be worth more than £16 million.
McQueen, the son of a London cabbie, who once cut out patterns on the shag-pile carpet of his sister's home in Dagenham, has drawn customers as diverse as Mick Jagger, David Bowie and Kate Winslet.
His most recent show, at London Fashion Week in September, was inspired by a Victorian lunatic asylum and featured straitjacketed models, bedecked with stuffed birds, clawing at the walls of padded cells and a swarm of moths.