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The fashion world’s leading voices have paid tribute to the outlandish avant-garde “genius” of Alexander McQueen, the British designer found dead at home in London, after an apparent suicide.

McQueen’s death comes just over a week after his mother, Joyce, died and almost three years since his close friend and style guru, Isabella Blow, committed suicide.

“He was an imaginative designer and a show-stopper,” said the powerful head of the Paris couture federation, Didier Grumbach, of a designer ready to court controversy with “bumster” trousers and ripped clothes, or to send stuffed animals or an amputee model out on the catwalk.

McQueen, 40, a four-time winner of the British designer of the year award, was creative director of his own label, which was bought out by Gucci and was one of Britain’s most lauded fashion designers.

A British Vogue profile says his most recent collection, spring/summer 2010, was critically acclaimed as his best ever.

“He was a genius. what a terrible, tragic waste,” said the equally provocative and politically inclined British designer Katherine Hamnett.

Model Kate Moss said she was “shocked and devastated” at his death on Thursday, while designer Vivienne Westwood was “incredibly sorry” to hear the news.

“Who knows?” couture king Karl Lagerfeld said. “Perhaps after flirting with death too often, death attracts you.

“There was always some attraction to death, his designs were sometimes dehumanised. I found his work very interesting, never banal.”

McQueen’s mother died on February 2. the designer expressed his grief on Twitter the next day, the Daily Mail reported.

“I’m letting my followers know my mother passed away yesterday if it she had not me nor would you RIP mumxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx…” he wrote.

He added shortly afterwards: ‘But life must go on!!!!!!!!!!!!!!’

Four days later he said: “Sunday evening been a ****ing awful week but my friends have been great but now i have to some how pull myself together and finish with the HELLS ANGLES & PROLIFIC DEAMONS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”

McQueen was also deeply affected by the suicide in may 2007 of Blow, the woman credited with discovering him.

Blow, a magazine editor and muse to milliner Philip Treacy, drank weed killer after being diagnosed with ovarian cancer.

As his family asked for privacy to come to terms with the death, tributes poured in from across the world.

Alexandra Shulman, editor of British Vogue, said: “He influenced a whole generation of designers. His brilliant imagination knew no bounds as he conjured up collection after collection of extraordinary designs.

“His death is the hugest loss to anyone who knew him and for very many who didn’t.”

In Paris, fashion insider for three decades Donald Potard, an artistic agent for designers, dubbed McQueen one of the greatest geniuses on the scene.

“He was one of the most impressive designers I have ever seen,” he said.

“Despite some of the dark macabre themes of his collections, he was a luminous human being.

“At a time when fashion had become predictable, he was like an electric shock, he brought a third dimension and was never afraid of going over the top.”

McQueen cut his teeth as a tailor in Savile Row, where legend has it that he left his distinctive mark – in the form of hand-written obscenities – in the lining of a jacket for Prince Charles, heir to the throne.

He designed the famous “bumster” trousers displaying the cleavage between model’s buttocks in a parody of low-slung trousers worn by workers and survived general condemnation over a collection of ripped clothing, “Highland Rape”, the first time anyone had chosen to send supposed rape victims down the catwalk.

“He was an avant-garde visionary,” said his boss Francois-Henri Pinault, who heads one of the world’s top two luxury groups PPR, which controls the Gucci group (McQueen, Yves Saint Laurent, Gucci, Balenciaga, Stella McCartney, Boucheron).

“His sometimes provocative genius, which was admired by all, continually opened up new perspectives,” Pinault added.

Even Pierre Berge, the former partner of France’s all-time king of fashion Yves Saint Laurent, hailed his talent.

“This death upsets me greatly,” Berge said on France Info radio. “He had talent and was an artist.”

But asked to comment on McQueen’s contribution to fashion, Berge said, “Contribution, let’s not exaggerate. not many people contribute in life. In any case, he was talented, he showed it, he was passionate about fashion.”

McQueen viewed Saint Laurent as a genius and a source of inspiration. when the French designer died in 2008, McQueen said Saint Laurent was “the reason why I am in fashion”.

“To me fashion should predict the time we live in. he did this is the ’60s and ’70s,” McQueen said at the time. “Pure genius and a man that I always revered and tried to emulate.”

AFP and Georgina Robinson

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Fashion world mourns ‘genius’ Alexander McQueen