The provocative British fashion designer Alexander McQueen died at his apartment in London's posh Mayfair district Thursday, his company said, shocking the fashion world which was gathering in New York for the beginning of the season's international fashion shows. His casual line, McQ, was due to be shown in New York on Thursday; the event was canceled. He was planning to present his collection in Paris in less than a month. Mr. McQueen was 40.

'We are devastated and are sharing a sense of shock and grief with Lee's family,' the brand's parent company, Gucci Group, said in a statement, referring to the designer by his first name. He began using Alexander, his middle name, when he got into fashion in the 1990s.

The police are carrying out a post-mortem examination, a spokesman for Scotland Yard said, but are treating the death as non-suspicious, a category that the spokesman said includes suicides. Mr. McQueen's death was described in some media reports as an apparentsuicide but couldn't be independently confirmed.

Mr. McQueen's death also leaves Gucci Group with a decision over how to manage a fashion house that was so interlinked with its founder's name. Since Gucci bought 51% of the brand in 2000, Alexander McQueen has struggled to make money, becoming profitable only as of 2007. The brand is very small compared to the group's flagship Gucci label. Still, thanks to Mr. McQueen's acclaim in the fashion world, the company was a small jewel of the Gucci Group, which is a unit of French retail-to-luxury group PPR SA. Among Gucci's other holdings are fashion houses Yves Saint Laurent, Balenciaga and Stella McCartney in addition to jeweler Boucheron. Gucci had no comment on the future of the fashion house.

Mr. McQueen was best-known lately for his dramatic designs, such as reptilian dresses and hoof-like shoes that were met with criticalacclaim among the runways of the fashion world.

At 27, Mr. McQueen was appointed as the designer of French fashion house Givenchy, whose muse Audrey Hepburn had brought the house fame in the 1950s. The same year, in 1996, Mr. McQueen won the British Designer of the Year award -- an accolade he received three more times.

'His ability to cut was parallel to someone like Christian Dior,' said Mark Henderson, Chief Executive of Gieves & Hawkes. 'He had the most amazing natural ability.'