Isabella "Issie" Blow was an English magazine editor. Serving as an inspiration to hat designer Philip Treacy, she is also credited with discovering the models Stella Tennant and Sophie Dahl as well as the fashion designer Alexander McQueen.
Though very successful throughout her life, she suffered from professional frustration and felt some rejection by the designer fashion industry when McQueen sold his brand to Gucci and did not include her in the dealings.
Blow's noted childhood trauma (the death of her brother when he was just two years old, the divorce of her parents and sense of rejection by her mother and later her father as well) as having a profound effect on her.
When Blow was in her mid-forties she was struggling with the impact of the trauma, her feelings of frustration within the fashion community that had been vital to her career, and a recent cancer diagnosis. Those her knew her say that she'd begun to suffer from a profound depression.
On May 7, 2007, Isabella Blow lost her life to suicide. She was forty eight years old.
Isabella Blow
November 19, 1958 – May 7, 2007
