by Legendary fashion editor Isabella Blow is remembered by her hats. A jeweled crustacean lobster that receded from his brow like a crustacean mohican. A small Chinese garden, with tiny eaves pagodas and lilliputian cherry trees with vibrant flowers. Her trademark was so distinctive that Princess Margaret once greeted her at a party with the words: “Good evening, Hat.” At her funeral in 2007, an 18th-century black galleon headpiece with delicate lace sails emanated from its high plume, created for her by her favorite milliner Philip Treacy, her coffin on a bed of white roses.
But Queen of Fashion, a newly announced biopic directed by Alex Marx and starring Oscar-nominated actress Andrea Riseborough in the title role, is set to highlight Blow’s more serious role as a central figure in fashion’s golden age. of Britain, a kingmaker. who launched Alexander McQueen’s career, and a powerhouse who helped put London at the center of the creative world in the 1990s.
Fashion biopics have been a harbinger of 2024. As Karl Lagerfeld, he will bring the scandals, flings and paper fans of the late Chanel designer’s career to small screens in a Disney+ series next month, following the drama period interest Cristóbal Balenciaga, and The New Look on Apple TV. , which starred Ben Mendelsohn as Christian Dior and Juliette Binoche as Coco Chanel. The documentary High & Low: John Galliano revisits one of fashion’s most famous falls. But Queen of Fashion, the latest in a series of film projects about Blow, who died aged 48 after a lifelong battle with depression, may be the most dramatic story of them all.
Blow’s larger-than-life wardrobe made her the stuff of folklore. The Guardian feature writer Emine Saner, who was Blow’s assistant at Sunday Times Style in the late 1990s, describes her look as “Wallis Simpson as imagined by Salvador Dalí”. In the newspaper office, “everyone would stand up to get a better look at her”, recalls Saner. “She would sit, Manolo Blahnik stilettos up on the desk, and loud and extremely dirty phone conversations with photographers and designers. As a boss, she was exhilarating and exhausting. She did not think to call at any hour, usually with an unreasonable demand. She was obsessed with sex and made the kind of statements and physical contact that would land her in court today. She was also brilliant, original, generous and funny. Two decades later, when I get a sniff of tuberose perfume, I feel both panic and excitement.”
At lunch with Nicholas Coleridge, managing director of Condé Nast, Blow wore a pair of glasses covered in a heavy black veil. When he asked how she could eat, she said: “Nicholas, I have no reason to worry.”
But Blow was also the Peggy Guggenheim of British fashion, brilliant with her talent radar and dynamic in her nurturing. After attending Hussein Chalayan’s graduation show, she sent him out to find a roll of bin bags, helped him pack the clothes in them, and marched over to the Browns store on South Molton Street in London, where Joan Burstein bought the collection on the spot and put it in the window, making it a star. Blow wasn’t just about money or opportunities, she was lifting people up and guiding them into their futures,” says Alistair O’Neill, professor of fashion at Central St Martins and curator of the 2013 exhibition about Blow. Ten years before the Met Gala brought fashion as entertainment into the mainstream, “Blow knew how to use fashion to bring the pride of talent and creativity into the world”, he says.
But Blow, who was of noble descent but not her father’s inheritance, was bad with money, and never reaped the financial rewards of the industry she helped grow. She angered newspaper bosses in 1997 when she submitted the bill for one Haute couture Givenchy dress costing 35,000 French francs – the equivalent of £9,000 today – on an expense form with the following words: “I. Beat – Business Wardrobe.”
“She was guaranteed front row seats at the shows, but she was also teased,” Saner recalls. “It was too easy to just focus on the lobster. She was underappreciated, under-credited for her keen eye, broad knowledge of art and endless cultural references, which in her eyes got her into trouble.”
In 1992, Blow bought McQueen’s entire graduate collection for £5,000. The two had a close relationship. When McQueen rose to fame and fortune, Blow felt he had left her behind, failing to repay his debt to her early loyalty. McQueen was devastated by Blow’s death and dedicated his next collection to her. The show took place in a salon in Paris that was dominantly perfumed with Fracas, the tuber scent she always wore.
“Blow was a complex character and her excessive personality meant she lived beyond her means and worked beyond her role,” says O’Neill. “This is the basis of why she was not properly rewarded or recognized during her lifetime. People in the industry didn’t know how to persuade her, which she did.”
Blow was born in London and studied ancient Chinese art at university in New York, where she was roommate Catherine Oxenberg, who went on to play Amanda Carrington in Dynasty. In the 1980s, she assisted a fledgling editor named Anna Wintour, befriended Andy Warhol after he admired her shoes – odd Blahnik stilettos, one pink and one purple – but fell out with Jean-Michel Basquiat after her to tell him. his Comme des Garçons duffle coat was awful. She returned to London in 1986. Blow suffered from depression, was treated with electroshock therapy for bipolar disorder and diagnosed with ovarian cancer, and attempted suicide several times in the years before her death.
She was all very well dressed, Uí Néill remembers. “She worshiped proportion and she knew how to put a suit on the pile. She used to say, ‘Always keep your head and feet sharp.’ She was a little tall, but she’s still towering over all those people walking up the steps to the Met Gala.”
