McQueen

and that, in a way, is sad,</i> 581 00:34:32,988 --> 00:34:34,865 <i>because I think women want to look at fashion,</i> 582 00:34:34,948 --> 00:34:36,291 <i>but they don't want to see it</i> 583 00:34:36,408 --> 00:34:38,911 <i>in some way as portraying them as a victim.</i> 584 00:34:40,620 --> 00:34:43,624 I'm not a misogynist. The idea was saying to the public, 585 00:34:43,999 --> 00:34:47,344 "A man takes from a woman. The woman's not giving it." 586 00:34:47,502 --> 00:34:48,719 That's what rape is. 587 00:34:48,837 --> 00:34:51,681 My oldest sister was badly beaten up by her husband. 588 00:34:52,007 --> 00:34:55,181 When you're eight years old and you see your sister strangled by her husband, 589 00:34:55,468 --> 00:34:57,015 who's now dead, thank God, 590 00:34:57,554 --> 00:35:00,774 you know, all you wanna do is make women look stronger. 591 00:35:01,683 --> 00:35:04,436 You might not like the honesty he was presenting you with, 592 00:35:04,561 --> 00:35:07,235 you might find it distasteful, shocking or aggressive 593 00:35:07,564 --> 00:35:11,239 or misogynistic, but for him it was his truth. 594 00:35:11,943 --> 00:35:14,241 <i>Those garments all tell you about Lee</i> 595 00:35:14,404 --> 00:35:16,202 <i>and they're almost like confessional.</i> 596 00:35:16,573 --> 00:35:19,577 <i>They do relate to things that happened in his childhood.</i> 597 00:35:21,494 --> 00:35:24,589 <i>We were just in our flat. It was literally in the middle of the evening.</i> 598 00:35:24,664 --> 00:35:27,008 <i>And he said, "Oh, by the way, I was abused</i> 599 00:35:27,375 --> 00:35:29,594 <i>"when I was</i> a <i>child by my brother-in-law. "</i> 600 00:35:29,794 --> 00:35:33,344 <i>It just came out and he started crying</i> 601 00:35:33,590 --> 00:35:35,763 <i>and then we started talking</i> 602 00:35:36,176 --> 00:35:38,770 <i>and then, almost as soon as he started telling me all that,</i> 603 00:35:39,012 --> 00:35:41,515 <i>he said, "Anyway, t don't want to talk about that any more."</i> 604 00:35:41,723 --> 00:35:44,442 <i>The stuff that he saw, I mean, the violence against my mum,</i> 605 00:35:44,643 --> 00:35:48,864 the abuse he suffered by my dad and the abuse my mum suffered by Dad... 606 00:35:49,147 --> 00:35:52,492 They had that affinity together. They shared that, Lee and my mum. 607 00:35:53,068 --> 00:35:56,322 They were both affected by the same person. 608 00:35:57,739 --> 00:36:01,164 And they had that connection through that, you know. 609 00:36:01,368 --> 00:36:04,542 And Lee saw my mum very much like a mother figure 610 00:36:05,205 --> 00:36:08,880 and somebody that he wanted to protect, 611 00:36:09,167 --> 00:36:11,340 but my mum wanted to protect him as well. 612 00:36:12,796 --> 00:36:16,801 I had quite a big burden on my shoulders. 613 00:36:17,509 --> 00:36:18,977 Erm... 614 00:36:20,637 --> 00:36:23,561 But I'd always felt close to Lee 615 00:36:24,099 --> 00:36:25,146 <i>and...</i> 616 00:36:27,227 --> 00:36:32,984 In the early years, Lee had seen things like domestic violence and, 617 00:36:35,360 --> 00:36:40,332 at the time, it must have also had an effect on his mind. 618 00:36:41,574 --> 00:36:43,372 <i>And that stuff he had to get out,</i> 619 00:36:43,618 --> 00:36:45,495 <i>I think it was a way of exercising his demons,</i> 620 00:36:45,662 --> 00:36:50,133 a <i>way of protecting women and himself by creating these strong women</i> 621 00:36:50,417 --> 00:36:52,215 <i>who looked like they had armour on.</i> 622 00:36:52,377 --> 00:36:54,471 It was armour for his heart as well, you know, so... 623 00:36:56,965 --> 00:36:58,717 <i>The relationship between me and Lee,</i> 624 00:36:59,008 --> 00:37:00,726 <i>I joke that it was four seasons long,</i> 625 00:37:01,177 --> 00:37:04,397 <i>purely because I think those collections and those shows became markers</i> 626 00:37:04,472 --> 00:37:10,104 <i>in terms of how our work life was also tied up with our relationship.</i> 627 00:37:10,520 --> 00:37:11,817 And, looking back on it now, 628 00:37:11,980 --> 00:37:13,857 I can see the reasons why it would be... 629 00:37:13,982 --> 00:37:15,825 How could a relationship work 630 00:37:16,484 --> 00:37:19,658 with all the things that were going on in his life, 631 00:37:19,863 --> 00:37:21,865 all the things in his past? 632 00:37:22,115 --> 00:37:25,790 <i>I can't think of any relationship that would be able to deal with that.</i> 633 00:37:51,728 --> 00:37:55,699 When you went to St Martins, in the first year you'd go to Paris 634 00:37:55,940 --> 00:37:59,319 and the idea is that you're meant to go to exhibitions. 635 00:37:59,819 --> 00:38:01,537 <i>But we would just spend all of our time</i> 636 00:38:01,738 --> 00:38:04,207 <i>wangling our way into the various shows.</i> 637