Isabella Blow, 48; fashion editor had one-of-a-kind style
Isabella Blow, the flamboyant British fashion editor who championed rising design talents Alexander McQueen and John Galliano while creating her own memorable look from metal corsets, one-legged pants suits, antler headdresses and other novelties, has died. She was 48.
Blow died Monday in a hospital in Gloucestershire, England. A resident of London, she had been suffering from cancer and severe depression, the Guardian of London reported. In January she was hospitalized for depression, according to an article in the Financial Times of London.
Blow was fashion director of Tatler magazine and also served as fashion director of the Sunday Times of London Style magazine. She promoted a number of young fashion talents well before they rose to prominence, including hat designer Philip Treacy, whose creations she often wore.
“Isabella was unique,” Hamish Bowles, the European editor at large for Vogue magazine and a longtime friend, told The Times on Tuesday. She used fashion “to create magic, pleasure and wonderment,” Bowles said. “She never had an off day.”
Blow was particularly impressed by Londoner Alexander McQueen’s designs, which slide mischievously back and forth from princess to screen goddess looks. She once bought almost all of his new collection, which took her two years to pay for, she said.
Born Isabella Delves Broughton on Nov. 19, 1958, “Izzie” to her friends, she was the daughter of Sir Evelyn Delves Broughton.
She was raised in a cottage on the grounds of what had been the family castle in Cheshire, England, until her grandfather sold it in the 1920s to pay off his gambling debts.
She attended the Heathfield School in Ascot and took a secretarial course before she moved to New York City in 1979 to study Chinese art at Columbia University.
In the early 1980s she worked at American Vogue as the assistant to Anna Wintour, now the magazine’s editor in chief. They were introduced by Blow’s friend Bryan Ferry, the British rock musician.
She returned to London in 1986 and worked at British Vogue before becoming fashion director of the Sunday Times Style magazine in 1997. After four years there she moved to Tatler.
In her powerful position as fashion editor Blow helped launch the careers of several top models, including the curvaceous Sophie Dahl.
She also held consulting jobs with various companies including Swarovski, which was then best known for its small crystal animals. For one of her first meetings with company executives Blow wore a crystal-encrusted lobster hat, to suggest new possibilities. Swarovski jewel-toned crystal beads soon began appearing on designer dresses and shoes.
She was married twice. Her first marriage ended in divorce.
For her 1989 wedding to her second husband, art dealer Detmar Blow, she commissioned Treacy to make her a wedding hat and soon became his muse, a role she took very seriously. “It’s certainly a commitment, being a muse. It’s like having a baby,” Blow said in an interview with Women’s Wear Daily earlier this year.
Her collection of hats by Treacy was exhibited in “When Philip Met Isabella” at the Design Museum in London in 2002.
“There was an armorial quality to her clothes, perhaps a defensive quality,” Bowles said. The effect was artful and witty. “She had an extraordinary engagement with fashion,” he said, “that manifest itself as a perpetually gala presentation.”
Blow is survived by her husband and two sisters.
