An extraordinary biography of Isabella Blow, whose pedigree, wild style, and outrageous antics catapulted her onto the London social scene and made her a fashion icon.
In 2007, the news of Isabella Blow’s suicide at the age of 48 made headlines around the world—but there is more to the story of Isabella than her tragic end. The key supporter and muse of milliner Philip Treacy and designer Alexander McQueen, Blow was truly more than a muse or patron. She was a spark, an electrical impulse that set imaginations racing, an individual who pushed others to create their best work.
Her fascination with clothing began early, as did a willingness to wear things—and say things—that would amuse and shock. She began her fashion career in New York City as assistant to Anna Wintour at Vogue. Over time she became famous for her work, yet it wasn’t enough to assuage her devastating feelings of inadequacy. Still, in her darkest moments, even as she began a series of suicide attempts and prolonged hospital stays, Blow retained her wicked sense of humor, making her friends laugh even as they struggled to help.
Lauren Goldstein Crowe has crafted a superbly entertaining narrative; wrapping the anecdotes of Isabella’s antics around a candid, insightful portrayal of a woman whose thirst for the fantastical ultimately became irreconcilable with life in the real world.
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In her biography of the eccentric, inimitable high-fashion personality Isabella Blow, Crowe (The Towering World of Jimmy Choo, 2009) compiles countless interviews with friends of the late, well-loved stylist. Although she was unmistakably talented and constantly surrounded by friends who were drawn to her warmth and intoxicating humor, Blow suffered from extreme depression and self-consciousness and killed herself, after many previous attempts, in 2007. Responsible for launching to stardom many designers who just as easily could have gone unnoticed, namely milliner Philip Treacy and Alexander McQueen (himself a victim of suicide in 2010), Isabella comically likened her career in fashion to that of a swine hunting for truffles. Working at Vogue, Tatler, and the Sunday Times, Blow did not simply ride the waves of fashion but seemed to orchestrate its tides. Although the work is at times disorienting, with Blow’s story being told by so many voices, the multifaceted approach leaves a strong impression of the tragic character who, Crowe argues, perhaps knew no other way to burn out but “brightly and quickly.” --Annie Bostrom
Review
“To tell the story—the times, the impact, the inspiration, the misery, the dreams, the fantasy, the allure of Isabella—you would think you’d need 100 writers; but Lauren Goldstein Crowe has been able to tell us all this in one very good book.” --Valentino
"If you did not have the great privilege of meeting Isabella when she was alive, buy this book and meet her now."--Kelly Cutrone, New York Times bestselling author of IF YOU HAVE TO CRY GO OUTSIDE: And Other Things Your Mother Never Told You
“A beautiful journey through Isabella’s creative life.” --Manolo Blahnik
"A triumphant portrait of the Isabella I knew and loved." -- Philip Treacy
“If there is a fashion icon besides Anna Wintour who deserves a full-blown biography, it's Isabella Blow. Lauren Goldstein Crowe has finally put her colorful life in perspective.”-- Jerry Oppenheimer, author of FRONT ROW:The Cool Life and Hot Times of Anna Wintour
Lauren Goldstein Crowe has written about the fashion industry for the last 10 years. She was most recently the writer of Fashion Inc., a daily online column about the fashion and luxury goods industries for Conde Nast Portfolio. Her first book, The Towering World of Jimmy Choo, was published by Bloomsbury in April 2009. She is currently at work on her second, a profile of the fashion muse Isabella Blow that will be published by St. Martin's Press in 2010. Previously she was a Senior Writer at Time magazine in London. At Time Lauren wrote two cover stories: The Guys From Gucci was a detailed look at how Tom Ford and Domenico De Sole turned around the ailing fashion house and made it one of the industry's great success stories. The story also marked the first time that Ford and De Sole had ever been photographed together and it was the first time that a fashion CEO appeared on the cover of Time. Ralph's European Invasion detailed the plans of America's largest fashion designer, Ralph Lauren, for building his business in Europe. She also conceived and launched Time's first-ever fashion supplement, Time Style + Design. Now produced in New York, Style + Design comes out five times a year and reaches an audience of over two million readers. In June 2003, Lauren won Time Inc.'s highest honor, The President's Award, for her work on the special. Prior to Time, Lauren was a writer at Fortune magazine in New York where she covered fashion and luxury goods. She came to Fortune from Fairchild Publication's DNR, a weekly trade paper covering men's fashion, where she served as the European Collections Editor. Lauren has written freelance articles in a wide variety of newspapers and magazines including Paris Vogue, Harper's Bazaar, the New York Times, British Vogue, the Financial Times and the Times. She has appeared as a fashion expert on CNN and Bloomberg Television and has been interviewed for numerous radio programs in the US and the UK, including the BBC World Service. Lauren has a master's degree from the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, and undergraduate degrees in English and History from the University of Wisconsin--Madison. Lauren is American and has lived in London since 2000.
After her suicide some small thinkers said that fashion had killed Isabella Blow. That was nonsense and this book dose a pretty good job of show the step by step road that led Isabella to a bottle of paraquat. If she'd had normal parents who were protective of her, if someone had been honest about the depression that ran in her family, if she'd been able to attract and not repel the alpha male that she needed instead of the depressive, weak or plain hopeless betas that she ended up with, if she'd had access to a good antidepressant earlier in life, if she could've had the child she wanted,things would've been different.
The only real flaw of the book is the lack of good photos. The subtitle is "a life in fashion" so I expcted to see some fashion. Instead all we get are home snaps and one or two fashion shots of poor quality. If you want pretty pictures save your money and buy one of the other Blow books.
I devoured this book. Isabella Blow comes off the page, at once nurturing, kind, and fragile but simultanously bawdy and outrageous. This reads like AbFab meets The Devil Wears Prada. A must-read for anglophiles and anyone interested in fashion.
As a senior and someone only mildly interested in fashion, I read this biography of Isabella Blow because it is written by the daughter of my friends. Unexpectedly, it turned out to be a page turning read. Isabella's life story is fascinating because of her fun loving, outrageous personality, her unique sense of style and her great influence in the fashion industry. But on a more subtle level, the book is also the story of British aristocratic life in the last half of the twentieth century. In some ways, Isabella life story reads like a sequel to recent Masterpiec Theater shows.
