A new film about McQueen's muse

17 years after the disappearance of Isabella Blow, editor, muse, and patroness of fashion, cinema is ready to dedicate a star-studded biopic to her, directed by English filmmaker Alex Marx. Blow's career has been nothing short of exceptional: she worked alongside Philip Treacy, Steven Meisel, and André Leon Talley, launched Stella Tennant, Sophie Dahl, and long supported the projects of Lee Alexander McQueen. In The Queen of Fashion, extraordinary looks and the most touching moments of Blow's life will come to life, portrayed by British actress Andrea Riseborough, Oscar-nominated in 2022 for To Leslie. According to Deadline, alongside her, we'll find Emilia Clarke as Daphne Guinness, a close friend of the editor, along with emerging talent Fionn O’Shea playing the role of designer Treacy, creator of the remarkable hat collection Blow used to wear. The cast is expected to be rounded out by Richard E. Grant, portraying the protagonist's father, and Hayley Atwell as former British Vogue editor-in-chief Alexandra Schulman.

Isabella Blow's life was marked by profound dramas from her childhood. The daughter of a military officer and a lawyer, her brother drowned at the age of two. At 14, Blow witnessed her parents' divorce and her mother's permanent abandonment, leaving her at home with a father she didn't get along with. Despite belonging to an affluent family, she received no support from her father. Before making her mark in fashion, she worked various odd jobs, from cleaning to secretarial work. She moved to New York in 1979 to study art at Columbia but shifted to Texas after a year to work with designer Guy Laroche. It was in 1981 that she met Anna Wintour, then fashion director of Vogue US. After a brief stint as an assistant to the magazine's current editor-in-chief, she was hired by André Leon Talley, through whom she gained recognition in the American art scene and became great friends with talents such as Andy Warhol and Jean-Michel Basquiat. In the 1980s, while working for Tatler and The Sunday Times fashion director Michael Roberts, she met and married her second husband, Detmar Hamilton Blow. For the occasion, Blow commissioned a ceremonial hat from Philip Treacy, the first of a vast collection. Recognizing the talent of the Irish designer, Blow invited him to live with her in London, and shortly after, she was dazzled by Alexander McQueen's first show, still a student at Central Saint Martins, and decided to buy the entire collection for £5,000. From then on, Blow became a muse and financier for Treacy and McQueen, a collaboration still celebrated today, confirming Blow's unparalleled acumen in discovering emerging talent. Blow's life came to an end after several suicide attempts in 2007, when she ingested a large amount of weedkiller. At her funeral, held on May 15 at Gloucester Cathedral, Blow's willow coffin was adorned with a grand floral installation and a Treacy hat. In an interview with Tamsin Blanchard in 2002, the editor had expressed her love for wearing the elaborate creations of the Irish designer, stating, «to keep everyone away from me. They say, 'Oh, can I kiss you?' I say, 'No, thank you very much.' That's why I wore the hat. Goodbye. I don't want to be kissed by everyone, I want to be kissed by the people I love.»

McQueen and Blow for Vanity Fair, shot by David LaChapelle

During her flourishing career in the fashion world, Blow also worked as an actress, with a small role in The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (2004) by Wes Anderson and, of course, in the documentary McQueen and I, in 2011. In the summer of 2016, the production of The Ripper was announced, a film that would have traced the tumultuous relationship between the designer and the editor, but there have been no updates, while last November director Oliver Hermanus expressed readiness to work on a biopic about McQueen. Over a decade after the disappearance of both creatives, their work continues to attract the attention of screenwriters, perhaps seduced by the same dramatic episodes that led them to take such extreme actions.