‘If you don’t wear lipstick, I can’t talk to you‘
Isabella Blow disliked being labelled ‘eccentric.’ Indeed, she was more authentic than that term often implies. She was, instead, a true original. Everything she did, she meant:
‘My passion for fashion borders on insanity’.
Her famous hats were far more than just a pose; they were, as she said ‘a part of her’:
‘They say “Oh, can I kiss you? I say “No, thank you very much. That’s why I’ve worn the hat. Goodbye” I don’t want to be kissed by all and sundry. I want to be kissed by the people I love.’
To seduce her, she once said, men would have the challenge of trying to take it off! (And it worked. The first time she met her husband, he complimented her on her hat.) At once repelling and attracting attention – it was this kind of perverse push, pull of contradiction that she always enjoyed.
But it was the mind under the hat that mattered, and her famous eye for new talent in the world of fashion – she was a great discoverer – her most famous protégé was the designer Alexander McQueen.
For someone so alive and attuned to the fun and joy of life her death by suicide in 2007 left the world that bit greyer. At her funeral the actor Rupert Everett called her “a one-off … your own creation in a world of copycats”. A beautiful testament.
