Isabella Blow

Isabella Blow (née Delves Broughton; 19 November 1958 – 7 May 2007) was an English magazine editor. She was mentor to Philip Treacy, and is credited with discovering the models Stella Tennant and Sophie Dahl, and fashion designer Alexander McQueen, beginning when she bought the entirety of his graduate show inspired by Jack the Ripper.

Born Isabella Delves Broughton in Marylebone, London, she was the eldest child of Major Sir Evelyn Delves Broughton, a military officer, and his second wife, Helen Mary Shore, a barrister. Sir Evelyn was the only son of Sir Jock Delves Broughton; his sister, Rosamond, married the 15th Lord Lovat in 1938.

Blow was also known as 'Issy'. Blow had two sisters, Julia and Lavinia; her brother, John, drowned in the family's swimming pool at the age of two. This had a profound effect on her. In 1972, when she was 14, her parents separated and her mother left the household, bidding each daughter farewell with a handshake. Her parents divorced two years later. Isabella did not get along with her father, who bequeathed her only £5,000 from his estate, which was worth more than one million pounds.

Blow studied for her A-levels at Heathfield School, after which she enrolled at a secretarial college and then took odd jobs. She told Tamsin Blanchard of The Observer in 2002:

I've done the most peculiar jobs. I was working in a scone shop for years, selling apricot-studded scones. I was a cleaner in London for two years. I wore a handkerchief with knots on the side, and my cousin saw me in the post office and said, What are you doing? I said, What do you think I look like I'm doing? I'm a cleaner!

Blow moved to New York City in 1979 to study Ancient Chinese Art at Columbia University and shared a flat with the actress Catherine Oxenberg. A year later, she left the Art History programme at Columbia, moved to Texas, and worked for Guy Laroche. In 1981 she married her first husband, Nicholas Taylor (whom she divorced in 1983), and was introduced to the fashion director of the US edition of Vogue, Anna Wintour. Blow was hired initially as Wintour's assistant, but it was not long before she was assisting André Leon Talley. While working in New York, she befriended Andy Warhol and Jean-Michel Basquiat.

She returned to London in 1986 and worked for Michael Roberts, then the fashion director of Tatler and The Sunday Times Style magazine. During this period she was romantically linked to editor Tim Willis.^{[better source needed]} In 1989, Blow married her second husband, barrister and art dealer Detmar Hamilton Blow, a grandson of the early 20th-century society architect Detmar Blow, in Gloucester Cathedral. Philip Treacy designed the bride's wedding headdress and a now-famous fashion relationship was forged. Realizing Treacy's talent, Blow established Treacy in her London flat, where he worked on his collections. She soon began wearing Treacy's hats, making them a signature part of her flamboyant style. In a 2002 interview with Tamsin Blanchard, Blow declared that she wore extravagant hats for a practical reason:

[...] to keep everyone away from me. 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.