We were in London having expensive cocktails at St. Martins Lane when she walked in. My back was to the room, Jeff was facing out, but I felt the air shift when she entered. Skinny, with ink blot hair and a wispy confection of feathers crowning her face, she was unmistakable.
"Oh my God, Jeff. It's Isabella Blow!"
We watched her glide past us and duck into an unseen area in the back of the bar. My heart raced in her wake...this fantastical British style icon and Auntie Mame-ish wisp. She of the mystical hats and blood stained lips peacocking her way through Fashion Weeks across the globe year after year and, now, in front of us. For a li'l lass from West Texas who watched Style with Elsa Klensch religiously as a child, this sighting, this brush with Fashion Greatness, was my li'l dream come true.
She was with a few other people, and they were all dressed up for some fantastic party or event or something. I'd like to think she looked that way all of the time. Fluffed, puckered, and cinched...even when going for a quick cocktail after work or for the newspaper in the morning. I'd like to think that she lived in a white marble townhouse accented in black and white striped awnings with a gold leaf staircase winding up from a harlequin-tiled foyer floor. I'd like to think that she had a hat library next to her bedroom. That all of her hats were color-coded and displayed on crystal busts molded in her image. I'd like to think that she had 50 different types of red lipstick and that some were collector's items from the the 1920's that had never been worn. I'd like to imagine that on Sunday mornings, when no one was around, she'd host a parade of mini horses wearing tiny velvet top hats on their heads.
Isabella Blow, stylist, editor-at-large, former assistant to Anna Wintour before quitting to move to West Texas herself and work for designer Guy Laroche (yee-haw!), discoverer of uber-designer Alexander McQueen, muse to madhat milliner Philip Treacy, and all-around triumphant global style creature was pronounced dead at the age of 48 this past Sunday.
I'm really saddened by her death. She deserves to be remembered by style scribes the world over because, without her, there's nothing really EXCITING in the world of fashion right now. She wore what she wanted and demanded that attention be paid to individual style. Clothing as art. Image as sculpture. Shock and awe with detailed sartorial elegance.
I wish the papers, or at least the ones that are supposed to be devoted to the business of fashion, would have the decency and class to focus on that rather than speculation on how she died (which is what many of them are focusing on). A gruesome rumor pinned onto a death is nothing but a tacky accessory. If you're interested in learning more about Isabella Blow, I urge you to read the Daily Telegraph's tribute, "Death of an Original", written by an original herself, Hilary Alexander.
In the aftermath of a rather lackluster and utterly boring display of Hollywood-styled-to-death "fashion" at the annual Costume Institute gala this week (with the exception of the venerable Charlotte Gainsbourg), I, for one, am gonna miss the hell out of Isabella Blow. Who will show up with the Parthenon on her head?? Who will peek out from behind protruding dollar signs or pose with a mess of pink spaghetti over her eyes?
Who, just WHO, will fly down a red carpet under a giant crown of silver wings?
I'm guessing she's doing just that right now.
