Customer Reviews

Isabella Blow: A Life in Fashion

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

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.

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.

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.

Lauren Goldstein Crowe writes a very good book about what seems to be, in the end, the shallow and rather empty life of Isabella Blow. Blow committed suicide in 2007, when she was in her early 50's, by drinking insect poisoning. A pretty grim and painful self-inflicted ending to her life.

But what was Isabella Blow's life? The eldest daughter of three born to a noble family. Her parents divorced relatively early in Isabella's life and she had very little stable home life. Years spent in boarding schools, "Issy" emerged without a goal in life, but with a solid record of having fun. She also had the taste, outsized personality, and funds to become a fashion maven, inspiring designers, photographers, and magazine readers from the 1980's til her death. She championed such designers as Alexander McQueen and hat-maker Philip Treacy, among others, and made them into fashion icons. Her work as a stylist and writer at magazines like Vogue (both British and American publications), Tatler, and others cemented her "presence" in the world of fashion. Known for her outlandish clothes and hat styles, she seemed to be everywhere - New York, London, and Paris - mixing the world of fashion with that of aristocrats.

But Blow's personal life was not as glittering as her public one. Married twice, divorced from her first husband and separated at the time of her death from her second one, "Issy" had medical issues - both physical and psychological - that prevented her from having the children she craved. She also had problems with money; depleting her trust before her father's death and then not receiving the expected large inheritance after his death.

Another reviewer on AmazonUSA wrote an amazingly perceptive review of Crowe's biography of Isabella Blow, entitled "What If?" Please check it out. That reviewer makes the case - far better than I did - that Blow's life was a series of "what ifs". Crowe does a good job explaining Isabella Blow's life, but this reader was left with the perception of the sad emptiness of it. Maybe that was Crowe's intent.

Fortunately, The Wall Street Journal had recommended reading "Blow by Blow" first. This book, "Isabella Blow: A Life In Fashion" is far better. It would have gotten a higher rating if there had been
more photos. A good read for fashionistas.

They say you can't judge a book by it's cover, but the cover of Isabella Blow, A Life in Fashion, is every bit as fabulous as the true life story written about this fashion icon. I knew nothing about Isabella Blow before I started reading this book, but Lauren Goldstein Crowe has done her research. Her portrayal of Blow's life is colorful, fascinating, tragic and, at times, hilarious, and I was left with the impression that Blow was far too creative to live a long life in this world. I had a difficult time putting her story down and I am now in sore need of another book that meets my high expectations.

This was an amazing book and extremely quick read. I am so happy that I got this book and not the book written by her ex-husband as from what I've read I feel that book would've been scewed.

For those that think that Isabella just did nothing but wear extremely quirky hats and clothing this book will change your mind. She was and still is an icon whom the world is a worse place without.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book, its insights into the fashion scene and to see how all the players are connected. I'm so glad I read it prior to seeing McQueen's Savage Beauty exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum in NYC, so I could recall the background story behind many of the collections. I am a few pages into her bio written by her husband, Detmar, and I think I'm going to be disappointed. Buy this one. One downer...the author's writing is a bit awkward and I found myself re-reading sentences here and there...a bit amateurish for a professional writer. I'm wondering if she's not an American author, and I'm just not used to a Brit's writing. But obviously much research went into the bio and I appreciate that.

Subtitled "A Life in Fashion", this account of Isabella Blow's life (released on the same day and with the same cover photograph as Detmar Blow's account ("Blow by Blow") is conceived more as a melodrama (complete with a "List of Characters" in the front) than a biography.

There are a number of very influential people in Isabella Blow's life who are not sources - American Vogue editor Anna Wintour, Detmar Blow and leading shoe designer Manolo Blahnik among them. Goldstein Crowe relies heavily upon a few interviewees with mixed results. Blow's first big fashion "discovery" - milliner Philip Treacy - (who also contributed to Detmar Blow's book) was close to Isabella for many years and provides lots of important information and many interesting anecdotes: he thought Isabella unhinged when she insisted he create a hat based upon a sailing ship. Treacy soon discovered that, far from being original, Isabella's idea was a result of historical research - it was a scaled down version of an outrageously impractical style of hat worn at the court of Louis XIV!

Less satisfactory is Goldstein Crowe's uncritical reliance upon the self-serving views of Rona Delves Broughton, Isabella's step-mother (and third wife of Isabella's father Evelyn). Rona's comments ascribe all of Isabella's problems to lacking (Rona's) self-described "work ethic" (her work appearing to be confined to managing the money she inherited when Isabella's father - a 6 million pound estate, compared to the 5,000 pounds each of his biological daughters, including Isabella, received). Not surprisingly, Isabella, who from childhood had been taught that she was an aristocrat, would eventually inherit a significant amount of money (and who received the type of fairly useless education - rather like that given to Diana Spencer - seen as appropriate for a woman who "married well" rather than had a career) was deeply hurt by this and had little to do with Rona, who she regarded as partly responsible.

Also problematic is the reliance upon information provided by Isabella's friend Lucy (Ferry) Birley. Birley and Detmar Blow had a falling out after Birley, who was "shocked" by the drabness and uninspiring food at the public psychiatric hospital Isabella was being treated in, unilaterally checked Isabella out, ignoring (or perhaps unaware of) Isabella's many recent suicide attempts. Detmar Blow was relieved that Isabella was finally under the treatment of specialists eminent in the field of bipolar disorder - three previous stints in expensive private clinics having failed (one was The Priory, which Birley had suggested after attending it herself for drug rehabilitation). The difference between a posh place for rich people to clean up addictions and what Isabella required for an advanced, serious mental disorder was huge and her removal from treatment marked the beginning of Blow's final descent.

Towards the end of the book, Goldstein Crowe seems to become aware that she has spent most of her time trashing Isabella rather than describing to readers what made Isabella Blow so fascinating. She then includes some amusing anecdotes from Blow's time as a fashion journalist at Tatler, the Sunday Times and reminiscences of her colourful appearances at parties and couture shows. This all feels like an afterthought. Ultimately, this is a book for die hards who want to read everything on the subject. If you want to understand Isabella Blow's genius, there are no insights for you here.

I wanted to read this because I remember seeing photos of Issie Blow in Vogue and other fashion magazines. She seemed to be a very interesting person and always wore really interesting clothes (especially hats) that set her apart from everyone else and she was apparently friends with all the socialites and celebrities. But after reading this book, it clearly outlines the useless, petty, and utterly baseless life that she (and her friends) led. Of course she did not have a warm-and-fuzzy childhood and my pseudo-psychology spin is that she dressed the way she did because she had zero self esteem. On the flip side, she had this entitlement attitude and spent money without giving any thought to saving. Later in her career, she lived from job-to-job and actually spent all of the inheritance left to her AND her siblings so they had nothing (she was in charge of the inheritance and stupidly spent it on stupid things). When I was done with the book I just did not have any empathy or sympathy for her or her "friends" that one would have when the topic of the biography commits suicide. Her friends enabled her and "oh, that's just Issie...." is a prominent theme throughout this book. Did any of her friends think to get her the help that she really needed? NO...they were all too busy wearing the latest clothes and going to the next fab party. If you want to know how McQueen started out and what he really was like (not nice to her), or read about Daphne Guinness (another useless person), or other fashion icons, this book offers an inside look. It's really a quick read and written so that it keeps your interest. When I finished the last page, I thanked my lucky stars that I live in the suburbs, go to work every day, and have a normal family and friends!