Viva chats exclusively to Isabella Blow's former husband, Detmar, the author of a new book about the once-fabulous fashion icon.
Detmar Blow was married to fashion icon and "patron of couture" Isabella Blow, who took her own life in 2007. Now he has co-written a book, Blow by Blow, offering an insider's look at Isabella's extraordinary life - her childhood at Doddington Hall, her time as Anna Wintour's assistant at Vogue, her fashionable discoveries of designer Alexander McQueen, model Sophie Dahl and milliner Phillip Treacy, and her tragic final years.
It's an easy read, but at times also an uncomfortable one - interesting and funny insider stories sit next to chapters about McQueen's supposed "betrayal" of Isabella and her seven suicide attempts, and there's a feeling that some things have been left unsaid. But it's a remarkable life story nonetheless. Blow co-authored the book with writer Tom Sykes, working on it for what he describes as two intense years. "I based the book on what Issie had told me, my diaries that I kept throughout our lives, our archives, and interviews with people who actually knew her rather than acquaintances. I was interested in describing the person who lay underneath the hat and beneath the clothes."
* Blow by Blow, Detmar Blow with Tom Sykes, Harper Collins, $54.99.
Why did you decide to write Blow by Blow?
I wanted to make sense of Issie's death and why it had happened. Issie had told me when we met and fell in love in 1988 that there were parts of her early life that she had no interest in remembering and had drawn a line under. I discovered that her early life was much darker than she had told me - such as her brother's death. Her schoolfriends told me Issie felt blamed for Johnny's death, which she had not told me. There was an early dark side of hard drugs, stripteases, and self-harm which made me cry. Her friend Antony Murphy described it as "no respect, decorum, or modesty". This darkness returned at the end of her life for the last few years. I wrote the book to celebrate her life, courage, and what I believe is her inspiring creative legacy. To deal with my own sadnesses of my life - my father's death, my early life, and Issie's death - and to celebrate our love. Issie often told me that many people would be jealous of our love for each other.
What is your relationship with co-author Tom Sykes?
Tom was the brother of Plum Sykes who was Issie's assistant in 1992 and helped her with her famous shoot "London Babes" aka "Anglo- Saxon Attitudes" with Steven Meisel which launched model Stella Tennant. Tom actually knew Issie, he stayed with us. I wrote 130,000 words, in chapters, in Lisbon and at Hilles, and sent them to Tom in Ireland. Tom edited and polished them into about 73,000 words and 75 chapters. He did the interviews in New York with Anna Wintour, and so on. I wanted Tom to bring an objectivity to the story, which he has done, and to make the book a page-turner. My background as a historian and lawyer is somewhat heavier and less readable. Issie would have wanted her life to be read at a fast pace - the way she lived it.
There are many memories in the book of your time with Isabella - but what are some of your favourite memories?
When we met, fell in love, at the fashion shows, the rare quiet moments when we were together, sometimes at Hilles and other times such as Paris, travelling with Issie to Brazil, Iceland, Sri Lanka, when we were cooking together in the kitchen.
That we were able to say goodbye to each other on her death bed. We talked about art, fashion, a pony, and laughed. She told me did I remember her as a "ray of sunshine?" I told her "you will always be a ray of sunshine to me Issie" and "Goodbye Issie, I love you."
Were there any experiences that you found particularly difficult to revisit; chapters that were hard to write?
Her dark early life. I found myself becoming very worked up reliving and refighting the creative battles of the 90s. Issie's increasing manic depression in the early 2000s. And our separation made me sad. I felt at the time and now that Issie was doomed. And six months after we separated she was in a psychiatric clinic. When she left Dr Wolfson in November 2005 who had managed to keep her going for two years, I knew that we were in big trouble. Dr Wolfson told Issie's sisters Julia and Lavinia that she would be dead within 12 months - she in fact lasted 18 months with six suicide attempts until succeeding on the seventh.
Since the book has been released, there has been some negative response from people who knew Isabella - how do you feel about this?
It was something I was expecting and discussed with Issie when she was ill. Some people need a scapegoat to channel their anger and loss. Particularly those who did not really know Issie and the sadness she carried, which was apparent to her friends early on at Heathfield School. Issie was of course fascinated by Sylvia Plath - and I told her that if she did succeed in dying I would be attacked as Ted Hughes was after Sylvia's death. Issie gave me a copy of Birthday Letters, Hughes' poems about his love for Sylvia.
When Issie was alive and so ill at the end of her life, many people, out of despair, criticised me for Issie's condition - feeling that I was not doing enough. [But] Issie was determined to die, as she told everyone. Issie suspected correctly, I discovered in my research, that her grandfather had manic depression - manic behaviour gambling away the family fortune and committing suicide. His half-brother Brian - Issie's great uncle - also died a depressed alcoholic "tramp". So, as Issie guessed, there was a genetic pre-disposition to depression. In response to the quite personal attacks on me, Philip Treacy told me recently that he wanted me to know Isabella had told him when she was so ill and people felt I was not doing enough that she was "very angry with the criticism to Detmar". She wanted to die. Issie was protective of me. If you see our engagement photograph with me blowing the horn, Issie is guarding me with her pike and helmet. I always felt that fierce protection by her towards me. Issie and I loved each other from the day we met until the day she died. She did not need to but she wrote in green ink to me shortly before she died "Darling darling Det, love you now, always loved you, always, until death, always Isabella xx".
I have had praise from her school friends; Nicholas Coleridge, who worked with Issie since 1988, wrote "The book is objective in a good way. Well done", and from those who actually knew Issie rather than those who thought they did from what turns out to be a slight acquaintance. Particularly single women without love in their lives!
I lived with Issie for almost 19 years - as opposed to working in an office with her for short periods. The critics attack me personally for having a life after Issie died - something she would have been very pleased about. As her husband I knew Issie better than any other - and what lay underneath the hat and clothes. Issie was an incredibly talented and incredibly complex person. Many people only saw the "creative, mischievous, laughing" Issie and not the dark side. She shared this with the late Alexander McQueen.
Issie had a lot to deal with: her brother's death, the cloud of her grandfather's murder trial, disgrace and suicide, her parents' failure to give Issie the love she needed, her failure to have a child, my mother's cruelty, her brother-in-law and cousin's freak deaths, her sadness with Alexander McQueen.
Vicky Sarge who knew Issie wrote to me, "The book is the closest thing to Issie standing in the room. You can practically touch her". Her cousins Rebecca, Flora, Benjie, Orlando, and Violet Fraser said to me Blow by Blow was true and made them laugh and cry. We both did well to survive our troubled lives - and to achieve in fashion and art.
It feels like some of this response is born from the fact that people feel so protective of Isabella. What do you think it was about her that made her so beloved and fondly remembered?
She was a genuinely caring and loving person who could touch people with her frank openness. She had the "Princess Diana touch", bringing empathy and love for her fellow human beings.
What was it like being married to such an icon?
I knew Issie was special and amazingly talented from the first moment we met at the wedding on September 24, 1988 when we fell in love with each other. I was used to powerful, fascinating women. My mother Helga is one - the band Stereophonics dedicated their song Madam Helga to her. I was very proud of Issie's courage and talent. As she became older she became embittered about money and the feeling that her father, and McQueen, had let her down. It was not so much about money but about a betrayal of her love for them. Issie, I guess, sensed that she would not live long - there was a vanity about growing old, and started to live her life as fast as she could. It became at times a nightmare with her reckless spending and her high-handed behaviour. But I realised that Issie had a lot of anger inside her and that I had to make allowances for that. I had loved my father very much - he was an alcoholic and killed himself. From childhood I was used to having a tough time. I missed not having more cosy times with each other.
There are a few books about her that are coming out soon; what do you think about them?
I like very much the Thames and Hudson book by Martina Rink, largely compiled by Philip Treacy. In The Last Will and Testament of Isabella Blow by Stuart Shave, I get Issie's heart. I always had her heart.
