RIP Isabella Blow 1958-2007

[Artemis]

Rest in peace Isabella. You will be remembered fondly.

 

[rangerrick14]

In a fashion world filled with crappy celebrities, model shows, and boring clothes I fill fashion is in danger of losing the true induviduals. What's next Andre, Anna, maybe even Hamish. I hope there are more eccentric fashionistas raring to fill the void of Issy the true dame of fashion. She is cut from the mold of Diana Vreeland and I hope there are more to come. My fear is though that fashion will take a turn for the worst without her.

 

[rangerrick14]

The more I think about it she should have been given the editor in chief position of a magazine like U.S Vogue; just think of what she could have done there with Andre.

 

[MissMagAddict]

US Vogue July 2007
Life With [SIZE=-1]André


source: scanned by MMA
[/SIZE]

 

[rangerrick14]

Hey another idea about Izzy. You know when u watch a runway show and think no one will wwear that and editors say "not wearable" I think Isabella was te one to wear hard to wear clothes. she had the pizaz and balls to pull off dior and mcqueen the way no one else could. With the dignity and bohemian ireverence of conventions. Now there is only one other woman to wear those clothes the lady frm itallian vogue.

 

[cigalechanta]

I only recently learned that Blow died this may, a suicide!! R.I.P.

 

[MUXU]

what??! what?! how could i have missed this news!! she died at rather young age...

RIP isabella
miss all your wonderful headsets

 

[KhaoticKharma]

There is an article about Isabella's life and death in the September Vanity Fair.

To anyone else who read it- did it strike you as a tad disrespectful?

 

[ruslana rules]

I just read the Vanity Fair article. It was almost like an expose. Designed to sell copies of the magazine perhaps? It seemed like the family did not want that specific kind of information revealed. But you understood some of the psychology behind the woman. So I guess a bit disrespectful. I read somewhere else that she ingested weed killer and therefore, it was a slow and painful death. How sad!

 

[MissMagAddict]

source | fwd

Hats Off to a Fashion Great

Isabella Blow's memorial service to take place at Guards Chapel in London

Friday, August 31, 2007

(NEW YORK) Isabella Blow's private memorial service during London Fashion Week will be an intimate affair-intimate, considering the much-loved fashion muse's international appeal-for 750 close friends and family members. Vogue editor Anna Wintour, as reported, will be on hand on September 18 to deliver a eulogy, as will Suzy Menkes of the International Herald Tribune and Tatler editor Geordie Greig, where Blow was most recently fashion editor at large. Bryan Ferry is also slated to read a poem in her memory at the Guards Chapel near Buckingham Palace, where Princess Diana was remembered today. The hour-long tribute will be followed by a small lunch that Detmar Blow will host at her flat. "Her hats are all there and it's a suitable atmosphere," a spokeswoman said.

 

[DandyWarhol]

*bursts into a fit of tears*

 

[Yanka]

I just read the Vanity Fair article. It was almost like an expose. Designed to sell copies of the magazine perhaps? It seemed like the family did not want that specific kind of information revealed. But you understood some of the psychology behind the woman. So I guess a bit disrespectful. I read somewhere else that she ingested weed killer and therefore, it was a slow and painful death. How sad!

that article was pure
They write about her death and previous suicide attempts as if it was some kind of anecdote. And what I don't understand, why didn't her "friends" help her? as in, monitor her 24/7 if she tried killing herself FIVE TIMES!

 

[nanker_phledge]

Uh wait sorry for the rudeness of my post , Isabella Blow was younger than my mother (as in she was 49 when she died ?) She looked at least 10 y older.

 

[MissMagAddict]

IN MEMORY OF ISSIE
Styled by Catherine Baba
Model: Christina Carey/Ford Models Paris
Hair: Frederic Kebbabi/B Agency
Makeup: Marco Latte/B Agency
Photographs by Jenny Lexander






image source | scanned by MMA

 

[jennifer~]

^ Thanks MMA!!

It's a little sad to see the iconic ladder picture reenacted, because it looks so similar to the original that one might imagine Isabella herself posed for the shoot just recently...

 

[MissMagAddict]

source | wwd | September 17th

LONDON – “Where is Issy?”

It was a question Tatler editor in chief Geordie Greig muttered regularly to his staff while hunting for his elusive fashion director, the late Isabella Blow, he recalled Tuesday at a memorial service for Blow.

The answers – not surprisingly – came in all shapes and sizes: She was busy buying underwear – 1,000 pounds worth – or on a beach in Mauritius wearing a velvet hat, or holidaying with Alexander McQueen. Over the years, Greig gave up and accepted “the agony and the ecstasy” of working with Blow.

Some 800 family, friends and colleagues including Valentino, Bryan Ferry, Daphne Guinness, Tracey Emin, David Adjaye, Anna Piaggi, Stella McCartney, Joan Collins, Princess Beatrice, the Duchess of York, Mario Testino, Prince and Princess Michael of Kent, Joan Burstein, and Tom Parker Bowles, gathered at the The Guards’ Chapel near Buckingham Palace to remember Blow, who died on May 7 at age 48.

Ferry did a special arrangement of his song “When She Walks in the Room” – one of Blow’s favorites - for the service. His son Otis Ferry, a fox hunting enthusiast and one of Blow’s godchildren, sounded a mournful hunting horn at the end of the 90-minute ceremony.

There were bagpipes, performances by the Regimental Band of the Irish Guards – Blow’s father had been a member of the regiment - and a short speech by her husband Detmar Blow, who remembered falling in love with Isabella at first sight and proposing almost immediately. He recalled having a discussion with her father, Sir Evelyn Delves Broughton, who said, “Issy isn’t every man’s cup of tea, but you and she are a match made in heaven.”

Greig, Vogue editor in chief Anna Wintour and International Herald Tribune fashion critic Suzy Menkes all recalled Blow’s talent for talent-spotting, her alternative approach to living, and her larger-than-life wardrobe: The burqas at fashion shows, ballgowns at the office and the lobster hat worn while waiting to board an EasyJet flight.

“Dressing up was about making her job into an event,” said Wintour, who worked with Blow at American Vogue, and recalled her once wearing a sari that unraveled as she strode out of the magazine’s New York offices and later got caught in the door of her taxi.

“Issy had the most wonderful ability to take even the most basic of tasks and turn it into something memorably thrilling. She had no time for anything humdrum, banal, or mundane - to the extent that the task of cleaning her desk every night had begun with a bottle of Perrier water and Chanel No. 5,” Wintour said.

Menkes called Blow a smart, original woman who “wore her erudition lightly,” yet who also had an earthy sense of humor. “She once told me I was the only person in the world of fashion who didn’t have to suck a**,” said Menkes.

While there may have been a lot of laughs, the service had its sober moments. “All of us failed to say how much we loved and admired her - until it was too late for her to hear our sweet words,” said Menkes of Blow, who committed suicide by swallowing the weed killer paraquat. A coroner is due to issue a final report on her death next month.

Indeed, Blow never received any awards or public recognition for her work, said Greig, adding that all the posthumous accolades were, “Too late and more than a little shaming.”

 

[liberty33r1b]

what mag was this editorial featured in?

 

[MsCrow]

A bit of a bump but I did a search and I couldn't find reference to the Laura Goldstein Crowe biography of Isabella. It's been reviewed well and is far more objective and comprehensive than the awful Detmar Blow one. It also of course features a lot of McQueen.

A comparison of the two is here: http://www.nationalpost.com/arts/Du...t+decipher+British+fashion/3845198/story.html

 

[glitterpeacock]

^^^ Also for those of you in the UK, there's a documentary called 'McQueen and I' on 4od which focuses more on the tragedy of Isabella's death than it does Lee's....

 

[gallianostan]

hoping this long-awaited biopic finally does this wonderful, extraordinary woman justice

Andrea Riseborough To Star In Isabella Blow Biopic ‘The Queen Of Fashion’ From Writer-Director Alex Marx, With Emilia Clarke, Hayley Atwell, Richard E. Grant & Fionn O’Shea