Watch the dramatic trailer for the new Alexander McQueen biopic

PHOTO COURTESY OF LIONS GATE FILMS UK

“I want you to be repulsed or exhilarated as long as it’s an emotion,” says Lee Alexander McQueen in the first official trailer for McQueen, a biopic honoring the late British designer.

Directed by Ian Bonhôte, the dramatic film seems to examine some of the darkness permeating McQueen’s life before he tragically took his own life in 2010, when he was just 40 years old. The doc assembles the cast and crew that played significant roles in his life and business, as close collaborators like set designer Simon Costin and McQueen’s nephew and business partner unveil the events that compounded to make McQueen the man he was.

Throughout the late ’90s and early millennium, his edgy couture pieces draped the famous figures of A-listers like David Bowie and Rihanna. Shortly before his death, the looks from his spring 2010 collection were even canonized in a Lady Gaga music video. But the famed designer was also a beacon of controversy, staging theatrical runway shows around themes of sex and violence, perhaps a projection of his own emotional turmoil.

Either way you rip the seam, though, McQueen was a pioneer in his lack of regard for fashion’s elitist status quo, and this is perhaps the closest we will get to the circumstances of his own unraveling from those nearest his heart.

McQueen hits U.S. theaters on July 13, 2018. Watch the trailer below.