LONDON - SUPERMODELS, glossy magazine editors, film and music stars alongside the elite of the fashion world paid tribute to British designer Alexander McQueen on Monday in a moving service at London's St. Paul's Cathedral.

Model Kate Moss and actress Sarah Jessica Parker were among the A-list crowd of more than a thousand people gathered to commemorate the mercurial personality and artistic brilliance of a designer who rose from a gritty east end London boyhood to the front ranks of fashion before he took his own life in February.

McQueen committed suicide aged 40 shortly after the death of his mother. He took a mix of cocaine, tranquillisers and sleeping pills before hanging himself at his London flat, an inquest concluded.

'I loved him,' Moss, dressed in black and wearing dark sunglasses, told Reuters outside the cathedral after a service in which US Vogue Editor-in-Chief Anna Wintour, International Herald Tribune fashion editor Suzy Menkes, a nephew and two friends talked of McQueen's unusual mix of talent, shocking profanity, vulnerability and love of a good laugh.

Lee Alexander McQueen was one of the world's most provocative and revered designers, and shows featuring his'Highland Rape' and 'Dante' collections were seen as classics.

When asked to sum up McQueen's career, Parker said: 'One of a kind, very ... The service was bitter-sweet - perfect.' Wintour gave an address during which she paid tribute to the personality and design genius of a man whose favourite pastime as a boy was to sit on the rooftop of his apartment tower block and watch the birds circling overhead.