High Profile

Strike a Pose

Masters and Slaves

Les Grands Esprits se Rencontrent

Lex Rex

"If I feel really low, I go to see Philip, cover my face [with his hats] and feel fantastic... Wearing a hat is like cosmetic surgery."

- Isabella Blow

Magister Dixit:

"I hate crap. I like craftmanship"

- Isabella Blow

The Most Beautiful Creature

"If you’re beautiful you don’t need clothes. If you’re ugly like me, you’re like a house with no foundations; you need something to build you up."

- Isabella Blow

All Together

"Anytime something eccentric happens in fashion, she’s referred to. Fashion in America is incredibly bland. There are very few people who push the envelope. In Europe there’s a background of these people moving fashion forward. Anna Piaggi and Daphne Guinness are two examples, but you don’t get many fashion eccentrics in America besides Lady Gaga, and all the Lady Gaga references I’ve seen seem to be regurgitated ‘Isabella Blow.’"

-Michael Roberts

Guinness on Blow:

"She was an aesthete with an unfailing eye and attention to detail, but she was also a person of extreme elegance and good manners. It did not matter to Issie where you came from; she treated everyone with the same respect. Still, Issie understood the world around her less and less, and, frankly, I cannot disagree with that. She expected people to treat her the way she would treat them, and the tragic thing is she was let down many times."

by Daphne Guinness

Real Estate

Air de la Folie

Hats of Style

Blow

"People think that fashion is all frivolity and done by people who can’t do proper jobs but Issie understood that it is very, very serious business in terms of civilization and culture. It’s the one piece of culture that every single person in the world participates in. Not everybody reads poetry or listens to music, but every single person in the world gets up in the morning and puts on something, and whether you like it or not, that’s a statement about who you are."

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by Adrian Gill

Rara Avis

Daphne On Blow:

"I miss darling Issie so, so much. She had a strong idea of the historical content of clothes, she had a sort of joy as well as enthusiasm and humour about fashion. You know a lot of people just thought ‘it’s Issie in a hat,’ but she was far more than that. She was highly educated and an incredible perfectionist. She was just an extraordinary human being."

by Daphne Guinness

On Blow:

"People would stop by my office just to see what Issie was wearing that day. One morning she might be in full punk regalia, the next dressed like a maharajah, dripping in jewels and sari silks."

by Anna Wintour

Les Beaux Esprits se Rencontrent

Style

"I think thinking is stylish. Looking is stylish. Culture is stylish. I think you need to be inspired by something in order to look good. A poem, a picture of Wallis Simpson, tailoring… I have an obsession with Wallis Simpson. When people talk about ‘style’ & ‘stylish’, they’re talking about trends. I think style is about a person recognising what their best features are and if your best feature is a waist, wear a fucking waist. If you’ve got a good bust, go empire. I think it’s about finding a mood that you keep to. Then everyone can identify with that style. I think that unstylish is, as celebrities do nowadays, to borrow things from the PRs. They borrow, and it’s so clear that the dress has just been sent. You can feel the bike delivery."

by Isabella Blow

Masters and Slaves