Feb. 20, 2010: The Alexander McQueen storefront on Melrose Avenue in Los Angeles is covered in messages from grieving fans of McQueen. But the brand will continue without him. (Photo by Cilia Kohn/CNS)

The weather was foul, the sky dark as ink on Sept. 16, 1999, the night Alexander McQueen debuted his first collection for New York Fashion Week. Rain had fallen in torrents all day. Black-clad men and women in expensive shoes scurried from yellow cabs and Lincoln Town Cars into a show space on the Hudson River pier. They were the fashion elite. And they had defied the weather gods to witness his show.

Inside, the stage was built to mimic the outdoors. Goth-looking models wearing chain mail and leather trod down the runway ankle deep in water. Their eyes were doused in black, like war paint. They embodied the characters of a dark fairy tale. Part sadomasochism, part Cirque du Soleil, 100% McQueen.

The Scotland native had introduced his eponymous line on the London fashion stage seven years earlier. Back then he was a young, foulmouthed, beer-bellied man with a shaved head and five-day stubble. His uniform was a T-shirt, sneakers and tattered jeans. Or a tartan kilt.

McQueen’s look was more hooligan than high fashion. But his talent for creating over-the-top couture collections and outlandish fashion shows quickly turned the pudgy Brit into fashion royalty.

McQueen was the bad child of British fashion. A one-of-a-kind artist. Irreplaceable.

But on Feb. 11, McQueen hanged himself in his London home, the same day he was to show at this season’s New York Fashion Week.

Just one week later, the Gucci Group, owners of the Alexander McQueen brand, announced that the brand would continue without the man.

This is not the first time a brand has carried on without its namesake. Today, the head designers behind Lanvin, Yves Saint Laurent and Halston are named Alber Elbaz, Stefano Pilati and Marios Schwab. As more and more designers are financed by conglomerates – the Gucci Group, the Prada Group, LVMH, to name a few – art falls prey to the bottom line. No artist would pick up a brush today and paint under the Picasso brand. But in fashion, designers often create under another’s name to keep the brand spinning.

“Individuals who truly understand all aspects of the fashion industry know that the No. 1 priority is to make money,” says Alexandra Rae Konen, whose independent label bears her initials, ARK. “You can romanticize the idea of fashion and argue that it’s exclusively art, but it comes down to providing what your consumer wants and gaining their business.”

The iconic French house of Chanel has ruled the runway for nearly a century, despite the death of its namesake in 1971. Founding designer Coco Chanel was renowned for replacing corsets with casual, comfortable apparel. She invented the “little black dress” found in every woman’s closet.

When Chanel died, it took three years for the couture house to find a replacement. But Karl Lagerfeld, with his cool attitude and penchant for black, proved the perfect fit. Over the past 30 years, he has scoured the Chanel archives, taking house classics like quilted bags and Chanel No. 5 perfume to new heights. Lagerfeld has embodied the spirit of Chanel without mimicking his predecessor. Under Lagerfeld’s reign, the business site Portfolio.com estimates the brand to be worth between $10 billion and $15 billion.

Jil Sander was less fortunate. The eponymous line of a German-born designer was founded in 1978. But it was not until the ’90s, when consumers began to abandon the glitzy, glamorous style of the previous decade, that Sander saw success. Sander and her collections embodied a luxe but decidedly minimalist style.

In 1999, Italian fashion company the Prada Group reportedly paid $109 million for a 75% share in the Jil Sander brand. The conglomerate clashed with the designer, demanding cost-cutting measures like cheaper fabrication. Sander, dubbed the Cashmere Queen, refused. The rocky relationship between designer and owner led Sander to leave, twice — first in 2000 and, after a short comeback, for good in 2004.

The Prada Group staunchly carried on the Jil Sander brand. But without its namesake, the brand lost direction and credibility among its faithful customers. The New York Times reported annual losses of 25 million euros, about $34 million. Two years later the Prada Group sold Jil Sander to a private equity group.

McQueen too had a short-lived stint designing under another’s name. He was offered the top job at Givenchy after the namesake designer retired in 1997. But the industry could not marry the idea of the loudmouthed Brit with the sophisticated couturier behind many of Audrey Hepburn’s looks. After five years of mixed media reviews and mounting tensions with Givenchy’s corporate parent, LVMH, McQueen left the company to focus on his own line.

“When you put your name on anything, it becomes an extension of you,” says ARK designer Konen. Maybe that is why McQueen could not survive at Givenchy. His identity was already tied up to Alexander McQueen the brand.

“I’d rather be known by what I do than by who I am,” says Keith Kirkland, the shoemaker behind Blacksmith & Cobbler. Kirkland considered an eponymous line. But, he says, “if I got to the point where I built a successful brand and decided to sell it … I didn’t want to feel like I was selling myself.”

Others view it differently. “I would love to build a brand which is eventually transcendent of me, so my design aesthetic as an idea in itself could outlive me,” says Lindsay Duvernoy, a burgeoning handbag designer.

McQueen seemed to agree. In one of his last interviews, just released in British magazine Love, McQueen was quoted about his brand: “I want this to be a company that lives way beyond me … When I’m dead, hopefully this house will still be going.”