A small animation I created using Adobe Flash displaying some of Isabella Blow's most treasured quotes.

3rd Time Lucky

It is a well known fact that the late Isabella Blow’s life was one of exception. She glided from extremes of inspiration to tragedy which ultimately brought her to her downfall as one of the fashion industry’s most predominant mentors and muses of her era. The phrase ‘third time lucky’ is often used in a more favourable fitting but this is a phrase I only feel appropriate for such a death at the hands of such great depression. On 7th May 2007 the English editor, muse, creator, mentor and icon succeeded in attempting to take her own life for the third time by drinking the weed killer Paraquat. During a weekend house party in her husband’s estate, Hilles, The Cotswolds, which included guests such as Philip Treacy and his partner, Blow announced she was going shopping into the nearby village. Several hours later she was discovered collapsed on the bathroom floor by her sister, Lavinia, and was immediately hospitalised. Blow later admitted she had drunk the weed killer the following day prior to her death at the premature age of 48.

Blow had suffered years of serious depression caused by a range of factors from her diagnosis of ovarian cancer, her infertility which provoked a one year split with her husband, Detmar Blow, during which Isabella had a notorious affair with a gondolier she met in Venice. Blow also famously agonised over her inability to “find a home in a world she influenced” provoked by her slow disregard from McQueen. As Blow began to fall by the way side once the deals for her protégé’s began to rush through, the growth of her unbearable depression began to strengthen.