Trust Your Style: a blow to fashion

a blow to fashion

Wednesday, May 9, 2007

Isabella Blow photographed by Stephen Meisel

Isabella Blow, the outrageous and flamboyant fashion director for Tatler magazine has died, and I just wanted to take a moment to express that I am sad that she is gone. Her presence on the fashion scene will be missed.

In case you never caught her interviewed or glimpsed her walking in or out of a fashion show, I thought I would share this excerpt from the Guardian with you:

Blow was rarely seen in public without a striking hat by Philip Treacy, whose work she championed from the time he brought an acid green felt, with jagged crocodile teeth edges, into the Tatler office.

Treacy said last night: "It was easy to think of her as some unusual looking person in a hat, but there was much more to her than that. She was the most interesting person I ever met. She was highly intelligent, highly cultured, she loved talent, especially talent in young people. She often saw herself as a piglet looking for truffles - we were all truffles to her, me, Alexander McQueen, Stella Tennant, Sophie Dahl, all of us.

"She was the first truly English person I met when I came over here (from Ireland). I couldn't quite believe her, and in 20 years when I have done everything and met everyone there is to meet, nobody beat Isabella...She was a breath of fresh air, all the beauty, elegance and glamour that fashion should be."

Treacy lived for two years in her mother-in-law's basement flat, and she commissioned his first wedding hat, for her wedding to the artist Detmar Blow in 1989. In 2002 her vast collection of his hats, including one that moved every time she spoke and one with 100 veils made for the funeral of a cousin so that the veiling would absorb the tears, became the subject of an exhibition at the London Design Museum, and a book, When Philip Met Isabella.

She was also admirer, muse and freelance publicist to Alexander McQueen, encouraging his work from student days until his present stellar heights.

They first met at his degree show at St Martin's, where he offered to sell her a coat for 350 pounds, and she ended up buying the entire collection for 5,000 pounds. "It took me a long time to pay for it," she recalled.

Goodbye Isabella, thank you for being you.

Labels: Alexander McQueen, Isabella Blow, Philip Treacy, Sophie Dahl, Stella Tennant, Tatler Magazine