Alexander McQueen brand will continue living

PARIS — Lee Alexander McQueen made the transition from designer label and set the “building blocks of a brand” that will allow the business to continue, despite his suicide last week“.We believe in the future of the brand,” Robert Polet, president and chief executive officer of Gucci Group, said at PPR SA’s annual results presentation here, which opened with a stirring video tribute to the late designer’s runway legacy as one of his favorite pieces of music, Handel’s “Sarabande,” swelled. He declined to comment on any succession plan, but said a fall McQueen collection would be presented during Paris Fashion Week. It will be shown by invitation in a “private salon” format on March 9 and 10 at an undisclosed location. According to sources, the design studio includes Sarah Burton, who was McQueen’s right hand on women’s wear for more than a dozen years, and the fall collection was well under way before the designer hung himself in the wardrobe of his London apartment on Feb. 11. Opening the annual results meeting with a tribute of his own to McQueen, PPR chairman and chief executive officer François-Henri Pinault called the designer a “pure genius” and “poet.”