Isabella Blow’s life and style featured in Fashion Blows exhibit

 

(Photo:MarieProm)The fashion world has its fair share of eccentrics. But the late British stylist Isabella Blow was much more than the woman who wore kooky hats. Fashion Blows, an ambitious exhibition examining her life and style through her over-the-top wardrobe, is currently open at The Room at The Bay on Queen St. until Nov. 1.

Blow, who committed suicide in 2007, was a renowned fashion editor who was patron and champion to a stable of envelope-pushing designers, including the late Alexander McQueen and milliner Philip Treacy. She was also noted for discovering the “aristo” models Stella Tennant and Sophie Dahl.

Blow’s longtime friend, the artist Daphne Guinness, swooped in and purchased the lot when her wardrobe was to be put up for sale at auction at Christie’s in London in 2010. Guinness created the Isabella Blow Foundation in support of emerging fashion talent, as well as to promote mental wellness in the industry. From Blow’s deep and dramatic archives arose an exhibit called Fashion Galore last winter at London’s Somerset House.

Guinness came to Toronto in support of the opening of this second exhibit. “The clothes are an embodiment of Isabella’s life’s work. The collection is iconic in that it embodies an extraordinary time in fashion. The various outfits are life chapters in her memoirs. Issie collected by intuition. She couldn’t have cared less about trends.”

The exhibit in Toronto has a different name because it is not simply a travelling replica. Curator Abigail Slone, the digital editor for Hudson’s Bay, went back into those fabled Blow archives to select 55 pieces (including 15 hats) to show a different perspective on the collection, and the woman. There are pieces from McQueen and Treacy (as well as footage from the 2008 collection they presented together in Blow’s honour), Deborah Milner, Dior and Galliano.

“Her life was so huge, and there was so much to play with in the archive,” says Slone, who called on Toronto designer Jeremy Laing and stylist Nolan Bryant for advice on the project. There are Fashion Television interviews with Blow running on a loop, as well as wallpaper-sized photos of Blow wearing her finery in the real world.

Guinness is herself a fashion icon, known for her two-toned blond and black hair (and a collaboration with MAC cosmetics), and the Toronto exhibit also features some special pieces from her own archives, with more emphasis on rare McQueen.

Guinness’s grand gesture was reminiscent of Blow’s own largesse when she purchased all of McQueen’s 1992 graduate show, an avant-garde spectacle called Jack the Ripper Stalks His Victims. The difference is that Blow collected clothing on a stylist’s salary (despite an aristocratic background and marriage, she was not a wealthy woman). That McQueen collection was basically bought on layaway. Of the decades’ worth of such stretch investments she went through at the archives, Slone says, “I mean, they are not cheap. She was a stylist, so it’s not like she was rolling in dough.”

Slone also notes that Blow had a particularly decadent habit of collecting items in more than one colour. “She collected in multiples. If she loved a skirt, she loved it three times.” Slone points to the opening dress in the exhibit, a pale green Galliano. “I mean, it is sort of nothing special. Not like the grander leather and lace and fur pieces. But it is about the intricacy of tailoring. And more importantly, she would wear it washing dishes.”

Perhaps that is the bravest thing you can do in fashion: not save your best clothes for special occasions. Most people who buy dresses with five zeroes tend to keep them wrapped up in museum-like safety.

Says Guinness: “Isabella’s creative courage was fearless. Isabella wore her clothes hard. They weren’t merely decorative.”Read more here:MarieProm evening dresses