Customer Reviews

Blow by Blow: The Story of Isabella Blow

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This aptly named biography of fashion stylist and zeitgeist arbiter Isabella, by her widower Detmar (with Tom Sykes) is a fairly comprehensive account of her early life, her obsession with emerging artists and Hilles (the Blow family seat) and her final spiral into suicidal depression. This book names names, so much so that it can be confusing to follow when the author lapses into first name references. It is sometimes difficult to follow the course of events, such as Isabella's education, as the narrative moves forward and backwards in time quite clumsily with little signalling. The genius of Blow was in both her personal style and her ability to identify, and nurture, new talent. The reader gets some idea of the artists she nurtured (Philp Treacy and Alexander McQueen the most famous designers and Stella Tennant and Sophie Dahl the most prominent models) but less of her own amazing style - the photographs are quite patchy. What this book does better is depict her frustration with her inability to commercialise her talents, and her decline into bipolar madness and ultimate suicide. The book suffers from poor editing, with numerous typos. Quite a good read, but doesn't adequately convey why Blow was such a sensation on the fashion scene in the late 80's and 90's.

This biography, written by the subject's widower, tells of the ups and downs in the life of his fashionista wife, Isabella Delves Broughton Blow.

"Issie" at 5 years old witnessed her brother's drowning. Her need for parental love and support was met with a coldness implying blame. When her mother divorced her father, she left the household with handshakes for her children. Her father gave even less affection. I believe this sort of treatment was a major factor in producing Issie's self-absorption, exhibitionism, materialism and eventual suicide. I think of Princess Diana advising parents to "Hug your children."

Issie's father leaving his fortune to his second wife, and naming Isssie for less inheritance than her grandparents left their servants, should have been anticipated. Issie blew an earlier inheritance that seemed to be of some size. This profligacy I'm sure was noted, but never discussed by her penny-pinching father. I would guess that his will was due to his hating to think that all he had worked for would be piddled away. For Issie this was (understandably, since no explanation was given) a rejection that rocked her already fragile self worth.

Issie apparently bought into the system that was so harmful to her. She yearned to produce a male child (then, according to custom, he would inherit the family estate) and felt a failure when she couldn't. Her rank among the British aristocracy gave her a sense of entitlement for things that she could not afford. Appearances had to be kept, so she couldn't ask her successful protégés for a royalty or a position. Detmar defines a total cash bleed, but the purchase of jewelry, homes, decor and cars (a "new Bentley" gets a passing mention) blithely continues. Issie's life is empty and clothing, art work and baronial residences fill a void.

She seems to feel no world outside her bubble of fashion and her society of party oriented aristocrats and parvenues. It's a cruel bubble, especially for women as they age. As they dine and drink, Issie attempts to outparty and outdress them. Her celebrity image is important to her career, and probably vital to her. After several suicide attempts and yet another breakdown, at the hospital she advises the staff that she is famous... they can Google her.

Husband Detmar is grieving, but not fully analyzing what happened. His childhood had the same love deficit as his wife's. He loved the fun of Issie. Did Detmar need the fun because he couldn't have the love? Could the pressure to produce this fun, not just for him, but for everyone else as well have pushed her too far? Issie loved her jobs in the fashion world, but they carried with them the pressure to be more and more outrageous. Maybe she realized there were limits and couldn't face the world without "more".

This book is painful to read, and its photos of Issie painful to view. I hope Detmar can find happiness, he sounds like a good person, trapped in an unfeeling circle of family and so-called friends.

It's a sad story but an uplifting one too. A heck of a read. Funny. Gossipy. Tragic. Moving. Romantic. Unputdownable.

Two things I learned about Isabella's life (other than the fact that she was more eccentric in her daily life, not just in her dress) is that her husband, Detmar, loved her so much, and was so patient, and it really shows. He was inspired by her too. She was a ray of sunshine to all around her.
The second thing I wasn't completely aware of is McQueen's betrayal of her.

In the end, you remember she was a bright light for everyone, if not for herself.
An excellent read. A quick read. I couldn't put it down.

Loving this book - it's a lovely and personal account of Isabella Blow. So personal - humorous, moving, and at times, so sad! It's an easy read - entertaining.

i have never really said this about a book... but by the end i was so attached to the character that it brought me to tears. Such a wonderful story about how some people really get screwed and taken advantage of when their intentions are so pure. a touching story and a quick read. loved it!!

Not the most well written book, but an honest look into the genius mind of Isabella Blow. A quick easy read.

I don't know where to begin. I can't help wondering why and how this book was "written," not to mention that just trying to decipher meaning and sense out of it is made far more complicated by having to slog through typographical and grammatical errors. Has HarperCollins Publishers laid off their proofreaders? I will give them the benefit of the doubt and assume they have.

I don't know anything about Detmar Blow that I didn't learn in the pages or on the back flap of this book. I don't know anything about Tom Sykes either, who apparently "co-wrote" this book with Detmar Blow, except that he has a sister named Plum who has written a few vacuous books of fiction and gets articles published in magazines like Vanity Fair and Vogue.

I'm sure a simple Google search would yield a good deal more information about all of these real-life characters, but I've got to go put my laundry in the dryer.

Throughout the book are printed sentences with the subjective pronoun used as an object (as on page 222: "... she was kicking Issie and I out of Hilles"; on page 229: "Dr. Wolfson told Issie and I that her depression was very, very serious..."). Maybe I just don't know this, but is this common in Brit speak? Every time I came across one of those lines (and it seemed to be every few pages), I found myself reading it as "so-and-so told I that..." just to reinforce that it was indeed grammatically incorrect, but hey what do I know? Blow/Sykes are the ones with a published book, and HarperCollins is the one who published it.

And that's just one of the technical details. There are numerous others (misspellings, missing punctuation, etc.), but the actual content itself was almost more disturbing (and not in a good way). It seemed at times that some sentences were just thrown together for the sole purpose of being able to drop names and places as blatantly as possible, like on page 176, for instance, where it says, "... David Thomas, originally a plumber's assistant from a village in Gloucestershire, who went to Hollywood and found fame working with Angelina Jolie and Mariah Carey."

There are so many random sentences, especially as the book wears on (and on and on) that seem to have no purpose or place whatsoever in the larger (apparent) context of the chapter, such as this one on page 208:

"At the end of our sojourn in Iceland, Issue flew back to Paris and I carried on to JFK. In New York, I stayed with Issie's cousin Aeneas, who lived at 260 West Broadway in Tribeca. Aeneas pointed out the Twin Towers, not far downtown.
"A friend of mine, the artist Jim Lambie, was also in New York.
"After the Twin Towers went down on 9/11, I discovered that Jim had been artist in residence in the North Tower on the 90th floor. A friend told me not to worry, as he never went there."

{yawn}

The fact that five readers gave this book 4 or 5 stars on Amazon.com surely must mean that at least four of them are personal friends of one of the authors.

Ultimately, I finished this book no better informed, no more moved, and even less inclined to learn more than when I started it. Even the photographs included in the book leave the reader entirely unsatisfied. The real tragedy here is that the subject of the book comes off ultimately as nothing more than an insecure and superficial woman whose sole aim in life was to get as much attention and money as possible using her privilege, status, and connection, grew up with a sense of entitlement that never panned out, and ultimately gave up because she could no longer tolerate her own reflection in the mirror or the empty but beautiful and well-dressed characters surrounding her. Besides, when Anna Wintour comes off looking compassionate, you know something is amiss.

This biography confirms that enigma preserves the grace of a character. And that many things are better left unsaid, some stories best left untold.

Knowing subjects intimately in the way you get to know the history of Isabella Blow demystifies the persona and in this case also gives insight into the machinations of the English upper crust as well as the fashion industry. All parties come off tarnished.

Some conclusions you draw

- about the English aristocracy is that many verge on bankruptcy - if not the financial certainly of the psychological kind. These people don't care to put in a real day's work but prefer languishing in a permanent state of vacationing and boozing. Their only talent is for viewing reality through a warped lens. A particularly funny line in the book is when the author eloquently describes Sri Lankan beggars as youngsters "offering refreshments" for which the travelers dropped coins out of the train window in return.

- about making it at a woman's glossy you need to be neither particularly talented nor hard working. Pretentiousness and family connections are sufficient to allow you to engage in petty power struggles while spending vast amounts of money on often ridiculous concepts. The man in fish tank image conceptualized by Isabella (as an example from the book) seems a particularly low point in contemporary fashion styling.

- none of the people in this story really evoke sympathy. Empathy perhaps for the human condition and a reminder that we each have a tale of personal tragedy. But more than that there should be the reminder to overcome these obstacles in order to make a contribution to the world at large. And not of the frivolous and fashionable sort.

It is a tale of sad and silly people. I'm only glad I could help marginally improve the author's financial situation by the money he is making off his wife's suicide.

On another note the editing errors in this book: it was frustrating to reread sentences in order to try and make sense of it and every now and again notice glaring typo's.

It seems as if this book was written hastily on one afternoon. I don't feel confident in Detmar Blow's research and fact-checking. I just finished reading Lauren Goldstein Crowe's bio of Isabella (excellent), and fresh from the Alexander McQueen exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum, I was salivating for more. What a disappointment. There are contradicting facts between the two books. For example, Detmar Blow states that Isabella decided she would rather work for Vogue's Andre Leon Talley instead of Anna Wintour, so she packed her desk and moved from Anna's assistant to another part of the building to work with Talley. Crowe's version has Anna strategically relocating her from assistant (she wasn't a good secretary) to a creative position with Talley. Either could be true, but I question Detmar Blow's facts. Isabella fell out of love with Detmar and had a passionate affair with an Italian "casanova" while still married. I don't think he could write a truly objective bio on the woman who broke his heart and made him look foolish. However, the book did kept my interest, if only for the subject matter.