Fashion industry pays tributes to eccentric ‘piglet’

THE fashion world was in mourning yesterday following the death of one of the industry’s great eccentrics.

Isabella Blow, the fashion legend known for her love of flamboyant hats, has died of cancer in Gloucestershire Royal Hospital.

Blow, 48, fashion director of Tatler magazine, was credited with launching the careers of Galway milliner Philip Treacy, designer Alexander McQueen and model Sophie Dahl.

Her editor at Tatler, Geordie Greig, paid tribute to his friend of 25 years.

Mr Greig said: “Few people are ever a real diamond — Izzie Blow was.”

Blow was born Isabella Delves-Broughton in London in 1958.

In 1980, Blow abandoned her studies in New York to move to Texas to experience her first taste of fashion, working for Guy Laroche.

She was hired as Vogue editor Anna Wintour’s assistant a year later and then to organise fashion shoots.

In 1986, Blow returned to London and worked her way up to the position of Style Editor at Tatler.

In 1989 she married Detmar Blow and at around the same time she met Treacy who arrived at the Tatler offices in 1989 touting a green felt hat.

She later phoned him at the Royal College of Art and asked him to make her wedding head-dress.

In 2002, the London Design Museum held an exhibition featuring all the hats made for her by Philip Treacy.

Blow was rarely seen in public without a striking hat by Treacy.

Treacy said: “It was easy to think of her as an unusual looking person in a hat, but there was much more to her than that. She was the most interesting person I ever met. She was highly intelligent, highly cultured, she loved talent, especially talent in young people.

“She often saw herself as a piglet looking for truffles — we were all truffles to her, me, Alexander McQueen, Stella Tennant, Sophie Dahl, all of us.”