“There were two hungers, his and mine” – Award winning jewellery designer Shaun Leane talks about his close friendship with the late, great Lee Alexander McQueen, and how the hunger that drove them both to create, helped him deal with the loss of his best friend.
Shaun Leane walks into the room and greets me with a pearly white smile. He is impeccably dressed and smells the way a man who cares about his appearance should. There’s something incredibly gentle about his face and the way he smiles with his eyes. As he shows us around his Farringdon workshop and introduces us to his staff there’s a strong sense of family. Many of his young assistants remind him of his younger self, he says. The boredom and restlessness that haunted him back then are a constant theme, as are the energy and rebellion that drove him and still drive him to do more and do better. As a 15-year-old Shaun was lucky enough to meet a careers advisor who recognized his creativity and set him on the right path.
“I wanted to do fashion.” He says. “I was a young gay man during the new romantics. I didn’t know fashion as an industry, I just knew clothes”.
He was advised to do a foundation course. That course happened to be in jewellery design. Although his parents were aware their son was creative and not academic, it was a hard decision for his strictly Catholic father to swallow. Shaun was an only child and his father had expected him to take over the construction company he had built up.
“He told me ‘you’ll end up wasting time with beads when you have a business here’ and he said that I would have to support myself.” Shaun remembers, “I was allowed to live at home but I had to look after myself. I understand the psychology of what he did, he taught me so well.”
During the one-year foundation course, Shaun fell in love with jewellery. From the start his work stood out and his creations were bigger and bolder than those of his fellow students. At one point they were asked to make an item of cutlery. While the other students all made spoons, Shaun designed a knife with a beautiful, articulated handle and a terrifyingly sharp blade. “It was not a letter opener, that’s for sure” he laughs. Six months into his studies, Shaun had already finished all his course-work and was feeling restless. “I was like a sponge, I needed to absorb and create. It had to be bigger and better and more and more. I needed this movement in my life. As I got older I realized what that was. Looking back I can see that I was hungry to create, to do something different. His tutor advised him to do an apprenticeship in Hatton Garden with a small but high-end company called English Traditional Jewellery which supplies some of the most prestigious stores on Bond Street. He would start at 8 am and finish at 6 pm, sitting between two master jewellers who taught him everything from technique to attention to detail. For someone so young and rebellious this at last was the discipline he needed so badly. It was clear he had found his calling.
“Fashion went out of the window six months after I started at Hatton Garden,” Shaun says. “I was so enthralled by what I was learning there”.
He ended up working for the company for 13 years, and it was this steady job which gave him the space to experiment with the groundbreaking and breathtaking pieces that were to later to make his name. By the age of 19 Shaun was making diamond tiaras and even his father was impressed. But it wasn’t long before the old feelings of restlessness returned. Increasingly disillusioned with the mass production side of the jewellery industry, Shaun was searching for something more. He toyed with the idea of giving it all up, but the chance to do some work antique reproduction and restoration opened up a new path and Shaun Leane the designer was born.
“I wanted to create pieces that reflected the time we live in, that would be reflective on my generation,” he says, remembering his mood back then. It was at this time that he met Lee Alexander McQueen, the man with whom he would go on to form an extraordinary creative partnership. The pair had much in common; both were rebellious, young gay men from London. Both had gone through traditional apprenticeships, one in goldsmithing and the other one in tailoring. Lee was studying fashion at Central St Martins and Shaun who had once dreamt of working in fashion, says he was now relieved he had not entered that crazy world. They partied together, shared dreams together, and became best friends. Shaun recalls how Lee used to pick him up from work and one day he came inside for a look. “Lee was blown away, he knew I made jewellery but he had never seen what I made,” he says. “He saw the diamonds and the tiaras and said ‘is this what you do’ I replied yes I’m a goldsmith”.
When Lee graduated from Central St Martin’s he asked Shaun to work on his shows with him.
“All the energy I ever had, Lee gave me a platform for it” says Shaun sinking deeper into his memories. Lee recognized what a skilled craftsman Shaun was, he would tell him to use his skills to create something beautiful.
“I asked Lee how I was meant to create these big pieces for his show when I only work with gold, platinum and diamond. Lee suggested I should work in brass,” he says. “Brass – that was a swear word in my workshop, so he suggested silver. I could handle that”.
Shaun’s hunger for doing something different was becoming obvious. Whatever Lee asked for, he would always deliver more. At that stage he still had his day job at English Traditional Jewellery, and the company allowed him to use workshop in the evenings to make things for Lee. A proud Shaun recalls “What we were creating was strong, it was very powerful and the press loved it. It was a new era of jewellery working in conjunction with what the designers at that time were creating – a new strong woman, and I was creating this strong woman with jewellery”.
He laughs remembering how Lee would describe what he wanted with just a few hand gestures and Shaun would understand immediately. He would get what Lee wanted and take it further, because Shaun too had something to say.
“There were two hungers going on, there was his and mine” he says. Not everyone understood what the pair was trying to communicate. Some pieces really pushed the boundaries, especially the notorious mouth piece which he says was meant to be about survival. The press didn’t understand it at the time, some were outraged but that never bothered Shaun:
“That mouth piece would help her hunt. It was about a woman being stranded and all she has is a piece of couture clothing. Some loved it, some didn’t but that’s only because they didn’t get the concept of the show,” he says. “It wasn’t about disfiguring a woman because everything we did was to make her beautiful and strong”.
Shaun learned to apply his skills to bigger and bigger things, like the infamous spine corset. It’s the spine with the rib cage made out of aluminum and leather and can be worn on the outside of the body like a corset. Shaun’s background helped him understand the crucial importance of attention to detail, and it’s this which really sets him apart. While other jewellery designers create pieces for the catwalk which will be seen from a distance, Shaun’s creations can also be seen up close in museums around the world. When he doubted himself, he says Lee was always there reminding him that he was a skilled craftsman.
“Everything I ever did with Lee was for Lee, it was for Alexander McQueen by Shaun Leane. We grew together, explored together. I only worked with him and then just before the show it would be the unveiling of… it was our project. Lee was such a visionary, so brilliant and taught me to be brave and think outside the box”.
Did he ever think he would lose Lee? “No! We talked about what we would be like when we’re older, we talked about being friends in our 60s, we laughed about it and he would take the mickey out of what I would be like when I’m old. We were friends for 18 years and worked almost as long. It was a beautiful friendship, and a beautiful working relationship. To work that well, for that long and remain close friends is rare”. Shaun says the way he dealt with the loss and found a way forward was by throwing himself into work: “I simply create, for him I want to create. He was part of my bones and my blood, when he passed I couldn’t not create or not further that energy”. Just as he finishes his sentence his mobile rings, it’s his father. Shaun speaks to him in a gentle voice explaining that he is in the middle of an interview. When he hangs up I ask him what their relationship is like today.
“He is very proud of me,” he says. “He has watched me become a Freeman of the city of London and win awards. He taught me well, to appreciate money and success and how to grow a business slowly. I still work very hard, my team works very hard. We thrive to create the new. I like to think that I carry on what Lee did”.
The House of Shaun Leane will be at the Foyles flagship store on Charing Cross road between November 25 2014 – January 23 2015 showcasing an iconic catwalk piece and the creative process from concept through to production. The works created by Shaun Leane for the late Alexander McQueen will be showcased at the Alexander McQueen savage beauty exhibition at the V&A from 14 March 2015.
Interview by Dena Tahmasebi
Photography by Andrea Vecchiato