Born Isabella Delves
Broughton in Marylebone, London, she was the eldest child of Major
Sir Evelyn Delves Broughton, a military officer, and his second wife,
Helen Mary Shore, a barrister.
Sir Evelyn was the only son of Jock
Delves Broughton; his sister, Rosamond, married Simon Fraser, 15th
Lord Lovat in 1938.
Blow had two
sisters, Julia and Lavinia; her brother, John, drowned in the
family's swimming pool at the age of 2. This had a profound effect on
her. In 1972, when she was 14, her parents separated and her mother
left the household, bidding each daughter farewell with a handshake.
Her parents divorced two years later. Isabella did not get along with
her father, who bequeathed her only £5,000 from his estate, which
was worth more than one million pounds. Blow often said her fondest
memory was trying on her mother's pink hat, a recollection that she
explained led to her career in fashion.
Blow studied for her
A-levels at Heathfield School, after which she enrolled at a
secretarial college and then took odd jobs. As she told Tamsin
Blanchard of The Observer in 2002:
I've done the most
peculiar jobs. I was working in a scone shop for years, selling
apricot-studded scones. I was a cleaner in London for two years. I
wore a handkerchief with knots on the side, and my cousin saw me in
the post office and said, What are you doing? I said, What do you
think I look like I'm doing? I'm a cleaner!
Blow moved to New
York City in 1979 to study Ancient Chinese Art at Columbia University
and shared a flat with the actress Catherine Oxenberg. A year later,
she left the Art History programme at Columbia, moved to Texas, and
worked for Guy Laroche. In 1981, she married her first husband,
Nicholas Taylor (whom she divorced in 1983), and was introduced to
the fashion director of the US edition of Vogue, Anna Wintour. She
was hired initially as Wintour's assistant, but it was not long
before she was assisting André Leon Talley, as of 2008 US Vogue's
editor-at-large. While working in New York, she befriended Andy
Warhol and Jean-Michel Basquiat.
In 1986, Blow
returned to London and worked for Michael Roberts, then the fashion
director of Tatler and The Sunday Times Style magazine. During this
period she was romantically linked to editor Tim Willis. In 1989,
Blow married her second husband, barrister and art dealer Detmar
Hamilton Lorenz Arthur Blow, a grandson (and namesake) of the early
20th-century society architect Detmar Blow, in Gloucester Cathedral.
Philip Treacy designed the bride's wedding headdress and a now-famous
fashion relationship was forged.
Realizing Treacy's talent, Blow
established Treacy in her London flat, where he worked on his
collections. She soon began wearing Treacy's hats, making them a
signature part of her flamboyant style. In a 2002 interview with
Tamsin Blanchard, Blow declared that she wore extravagant hats for a
practical reason:
[...] to keep
everyone away from me. They say, Oh, can I kiss you? I say, No, thank
you very much. That's why I've worn the hat. Goodbye. I don't want to
be kissed by all and sundry. I want to be kissed by the people I
love.
In 1993, Blow worked
with the photographer Steven Meisel producing the Babes in London
shoot featuring Plum Sykes, Bella Freud, and Honor Fraser. Blow had a
natural sense of style and a good feeling for future fashion
directions. She discovered Alexander McQueen and purchased his entire
graduate collection for £5,000, paying it off in weekly £100
instalments. Spotting Sophie Dahl, Blow described her as "a blow
up doll with brains", and launched the model's career.
Blow supported both
the fashion world and the art world. Artists Tim Noble and Sue
Webster created a shady artwork which was displayed in the National
Portrait Gallery.
Blow was the fashion
director of Tatler and consulted for DuPont Lycra, Lacoste, and
Swarovski. In 2002, she became the subject of an exhibition entitled
When Philip met Isabella, featuring sketches and photographs of her
wearing Treacy's hat designs.
In 2004, Blow had a
brief acting cameo in the film The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou.[
In 2005, Blow
starred in a project by artist Matthieu Laurette, commissioned and
produced by Frieze Projects 2005 and entitled "What Do They Wear
at Frieze Art Fair?" It consisted of daily guided tours of
Frieze Art Fair led by Blow and fellow international fashion experts
Peter Saville, Kira Joliffe, and Bay Garnett.
Shortly before her
death, Blow was the creative director and stylist of a series of
books for an Arabic beauty magazine Alef; the books were being
produced by Kuwaiti fashion entrepreneur Sheikh Majed al-Sabah.
Toward the end of
her life, Blow had become seriously depressed and was reportedly
anguished over her inability to "find a home in a world she
influenced". Daphne Guinness, a friend of Blow's stated, "She
was upset that Alexander McQueen didn't take her along when he sold
his brand to Gucci. Once the deals started happening, she fell by the
wayside. Everybody else got contracts, and she got a free dress".
According to a 2002 interview with Tamsin Blanchard, it was Blow who
brokered the deal in which Gucci purchased McQueen's label.
Other pressures
included money problems (Blow was disinherited by her father in 1994)
and infertility. In an effort to have a child, Blow and her husband
had unsuccessfully tried in vitro fertilisation eight times. She
later stated, "We were like a pair of exotic fruits that could
not breed when placed together."
In 2004, Isabella
and Detmar Blow separated. Detmar Blow went on to have an affair with
Stephanie Theobald, the society editor of British Harper's Bazaar,
while his estranged wife entered into a liaison with a gondolier she
met in Venice. During the couple's separation, Blow was diagnosed
with bipolar disorder and began undergoing electroshock therapy. For
a time, the treatments appeared to be helpful. During this period she
also had an affair with Matthew Mellon; however, after an
eighteen-month separation, Isabella and Detmar Blow were reconciled.
Soon after, she was diagnosed with ovarian cancer.
Depressed over her
waning celebrity status and her cancer diagnosis, Blow began telling
friends that she was suicidal. In 2006, Blow attempted suicide with
an overdose of sleeping pills. Later that year, Blow again attempted
suicide by jumping from the Hammersmith Flyover, which resulted in
her breaking both ankles.
In 2007, Blow made
several more suicide attempts by driving her car into the rear of a
lorry, attempting to obtain horse tranquilizers, trying to drown
herself in a lake and by overdosing while on a beach in India.
On 6 May 2007,
during a weekend house party at Hilles, where the guests included
Treacy and his partner, Stefan Bartlett, Blow announced that she was
going shopping. Instead, she was later discovered collapsed on a
bathroom floor by her sister Lavinia and was taken to Gloucestershire
Royal Hospital, where Blow told the doctor she had drunk the
weedkiller Paraquat. She died at the hospital the following day.
Blow's death was
initially reported as being caused by ovarian cancer;[24][26]
however, a coroner later ruled the death a suicide. At the inquest,
Blow's sister, Lavinia Verney, stated that after she discovered her
sister had ingested the poison, Blow had told her, "I'm worried
that I haven't taken enough."
After her death,
Detmar Blow confirmed that his wife suffered from depression and that
she had once declared, "I'm fighting depression and I can't beat
it."
Her funeral was held
at Gloucester Cathedral on 15 May 2007. Her casket, made of willow,
was surmounted by one of her Philip Treacy hats instead of a floral
tribute, and her pallbearers included her godson Otis Ferry, a son of
the rock star Bryan Ferry. (In 2010, Bryan Ferry dedicated his
Olympia album in memoriam Isabella Blow and David Williams.) Actor
Rupert Everett and actress Joan Collins delivered eulogies. Opera
singer Charles Eliasch sang. A memorial service was held in the
Guards Chapel in London on 18 September 2007, where Anna Wintour and
Geordie Greig spoke. Prince Michael and Princess Michael of Kent were
in attendance. Wintour's eulogy and part of the memorial service can
be seen in DVD disc two of The September Issue.
(
…) “Perhaps I'll have a go myself. In some ways, she was a
monster. She was dismissive of anyone she considered to be
unimportant or – worse – uninteresting, and her "eccentricity"
was more of a put-on than she cared to admit. If you ask me, she
never forgot that she had a lobster on her head, or a satellite dish.
Then again, in full sail, she was a wonderful sight: Rod Hull's emu
as styled by Salvador Dali, a human triffid who smoked Benson and
Hedges, who never wore underwear and whose touchstones in life were
good jewellery and high birth, and not a lot else. She was filthy and
funny and ridiculous. She was born in the wrong time.”
Rachel Cooke / “Blow by
Blow: The Story of Isabella Blow by Detmar Blow”
Blow
by Blow: The Story of Isabella Blow by Detmar Blow
The
late fashion muse Isabella Blow could never be called dull – so why
is her husband's portrait of her?
Rachel
Cooke
Sunday
3 October 2010 00.02 BST
Isabella Blow, the
fashion stylist with a penchant for loony hats and a talent for
discovering the Next Big Thing, died on 7 May 2007, at the age of 48,
having drunk a quantity of the weedkiller paraquat. Two days later,
on 9 May, I was dispatched by this newspaper to Hilles, her
Gloucestershire home, to interview her husband Detmar Blow, with whom
I have a passing acquaintance (I used to work with Issie at the
Sunday Times; Detmar was a regular visitor to the office). This
wasn't an easy encounter – he was tearful and slightly manic –
but it would have been unfair of me to have done anything other than
give him the benefit of the doubt. He had suffered a terrible loss.
In spite of my better instincts, then, I attributed his weirder
comments to grief, and made light of the fact that, midway through
our conversation, he lunged at me with such force I ended up lying
prone on a sofa, his soft bulk flapping, carp-like, on top of me. I
even failed to contradict him when he insisted that Issie had died of
cancer, though like everyone, I knew that, months before, she had
thrown herself off a flyover, smashing her ankles, and condemning
herself to a life of (oh, horror!) flat shoes.
Three years on, and
I rather wonder why I bothered. The more I read of Blow's new
biography of his wife – I use the word loosely; this book is to
biography what a jar of Chicken Tonight is to cooking – the more
convinced I was that his inappropriate behaviour on that day was not
remotely unusual. Blow by Blow could not be more inappropriate if it
tried. It's not only that it is so blatant an attempt to cash in,
though he was obviously in a tremendous rush to get it out: the thing
is so pockmarked with inaccuracies, I failed to be surprised even
when he described his wife's eyes as bright blue (I believe he was
right the first time, when he told us they were green). No, it's his
tone – whining and solipsistic – that is most repulsive.
Detmar is the sort
of chap who would once have been described as a milksop; when Issie
met him in 1988 he was 25, but so close to his mother he used to shop
for her sanitary towels. Given that he found even part-time work
exhausting – in his book, he is forever off on holiday to recover
from his shifts as a solicitor – you can probably guess how he
coped with Issie's mental health problems. In Blow by Blow, he flips
between sickly self-pity and a weird kind of pride, as if he has
landed the best role in a particularly juicy melodrama. There is, for
instance, something perturbingly gelid about the satisfaction with
which he describes the jacket he wore to visit his wife on her
deathbed ("punk Harris tweed with a Rhodesian flag on the back
and an Umbro label on the front", since you ask) .
All of which is a
terrible shame, because Issie's story is a fabulous one. She was born
in 1958, the daughter of Evelyn Delves Broughton, whose father was
Jock Delves Broughton of White Mischief fame. Detmar writes of a
Delves Broughton curse, which might be overstating it. But still,
Jock, having been acquitted of the murder of his wife's lover,
poisoned himself in the Britannia Adelphi Hotel in Liverpool. Issie
was fascinated by this. More horrifying, when she was five, her baby
brother John drowned in the family pool. The story Issie liked to
tell was that her mother had left the children to go and apply her
lipstick – which is straight out of A Handful of Dust – but
Detmar disputes the veracity of this: Issie, too, could be
self-dramatising.
She and Detmar met
at a wedding. "I love your hat," he said. By then she was
already a minor legend in fashion circles, famous for flashing her
breasts and being a friend of Andy Warhol. Detmar proposed 16 days
later. Their engagement photograph, in which Issie is dressed like a
medieval page, complete with ceremonial axe, and Detmar is sounding
some kind of horn, makes me cry with laughter every time I look at
it. What did she see in him? Well, for one thing, there was Hilles,
his Arts & Crafts house, which stands in 1,000 prime acres. Her
own family having been forced to close up their ancestral home,
Doddington Hall, Issie had an obsession with grand houses, a fixation
matched only by her preoccupation with money. Her wealthy father had
left her only £5,000 and she was convinced that she would end up a
bag lady. Perhaps she thought Hilles would help clear her overdraft.
Unfortunately, it
was not to be. Detmar goes on about how broke they were – grand
estates being not at all the same thing as capital – but it's hard
to sympathise when you find that they can nevertheless afford to snap
up a flat in Eaton Square. Ultimately, Issie's profligacy grew to be
another symptom of her manic depression, but it wasn't so in the
beginning. Money simply passed through her fingers like sand. When
she worked at Tatler, she submitted the most extravagant expenses
claim its owner, Condé Nast, had even seen: £50,000 for "a
very small ruin, which really was a must". Her supporters claim
she was badly treated by her most famous discovery, Alexander
McQueen; when he landed the big job at Givenchy, he could find no
paid role for his "muse". But really, what could he do?
Erratic doesn't even begin to describe her methods. If she felt like
it, she worked from her bed.
Her husband, from
whom she was estranged towards the end, takes the reader through her
various jobs, at Vogue, Tatler and the Sunday Times. He details her
IVF treatments (her failure to conceive may, he speculates, have
contributed towards her depression). There are some good anecdotes –
Issie once cleared a first-class rail carriage by telling everyone
how her "combine harvester" teeth prevented her from giving
oral sex – though laziness (his own and his co-writer's) means the
best stories are cut short before they even begin. What, for
instance, actually happened when she joined the Prince of Wales at a
house party? The mind boggles, but he can't be bothered to find out.
However, the crime for which he really cannot be forgiven is his
total failure to pin Issie to the page, to breathe life into her for
the benefit of those who never met her. How did he render one so
flashy so dull?
Perhaps I'll have a
go myself. In some ways, she was a monster. She was dismissive of
anyone she considered to be unimportant or – worse –
uninteresting, and her "eccentricity" was more of a put-on
than she cared to admit. If you ask me, she never forgot that she had
a lobster on her head, or a satellite dish. Then again, in full sail,
she was a wonderful sight: Rod Hull's emu as styled by Salvador Dali,
a human triffid who smoked Benson and Hedges, who never wore
underwear and whose touchstones in life were good jewellery and high
birth, and not a lot else. She was filthy and funny and ridiculous.
She was born in the wrong time. I cannot quite believe that she
really existed, much less that I once shared a desk with her. The
desk was grey, but the woman who sometimes deigned to visit it seemed
to be permanently aflame, a dazzling heap of feathers and fur and
leather. We laughed at her, but a tiny part of us was in awe. No one
else was going to earn the Murdoch shilling while wearing a lampshade
on their head.
The incomparable
Isabella Blow always pushed boundaries in the fashion world, often
using her personality as her most offensive weapon. Famous for
discovering talents such as Philip Treacy, Alexander McQueen, Sophie
Dahl and Hussein Chalayan, she also nurtured and inspired many
artists and designers across the industry.
A unique stylist,
she worked for Vogue and Tatler in the US and the UK, collaborating
with major photographers on breathtaking, and often infamous, shoots.
Personal letters
written exclusively for this book have been contributed by legendary
names in the fashion world, from Valentino and Anna Wintour to Manolo
Blahník and Naomi Campbell, and from artists such as Tracey Emin and
Noble & Webster whom she inspired. Iconic portraits have been
contributed by some of the greatest photographers in fashion,
including Mario Testino, Rankin, Donald McPherson and Richard
Burbridge.
All combine to paint
a vivid image of Isabella that celebrates the ecstasy and tragedy of
her astonishing life.
Martina Rink began
her career as a personal assistant to Isabella Blow. She is now
director of Fashion Spotlight in Berlin.
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