Ties that bind
They met at 16 but didn’t become fast friends until 1998, when Isabella Blow and Daphne Guinness discovered they shared a mutual love of McQueen. Guinness, now guardian of her late friend’s wardrobe, speaks about bringing Isabella Blow: A Fashionable Life
“IT WAS A SORT OF A GOLDEN MOMENT, A SHINING MOMENT IN LONDON”
Ihope people discover how human Isabella Blow and Alexander McQueen were and how much they put in. This is a human being’s collection of things. That was why it was so important for me to keep all her pieces together. She worked as a stylist, but that’s not why she kept certain things. It’s why you don’t throw things away, in a way. I’m glad it didn’t get spread out. And also that was a moment in time, it was a sort of a golden moment, a shining moment in London – there was Alexander, all sorts of designers, and then it vanished.
“Julia, her sister, said I could only buy the collection if I wore things once in a while, otherwise Issy would blow my head off from above. I do this for Julia, I do this for Issy and I think that she doesn’t mind if I wear the jackets, but I certainly won’t put on her hat. Never. I can’t. She’s her – I’m not trying to be Isabella Blow.
“I bought the collection in 2010. I remember calling [fashion historian and director of the Fashion Institute of Technology] Valerie Steele and telling her I wanted to buy the collection and she said: ‘Well, that’s great.’ I just bought Issy’s stuff and I didn’t know what to do, and I thought: ‘There’s a thread here.’ It’s very important for the Isabella Blow foundation to carry on creating more scholarships at Central Saint Martins and to create awareness of suicide. No-one talks about mental health or mental wellness and I’ve lost too many friends. I don’t want to be too dark about it, but that’s what I want to achieve. It’s not a very hot topic, because no-one wants to talk about people killing themselves but they did, I’m afraid. I don’t want to be the fashion poster child of suicide but it seems to be that way at this moment.
“But there’s also joy. There is a great lightness to their relationship, and it wasn’t all darkness, it wasn’t all death; it was only death in the end. There was a lot of laughter and fantastic, I mean just real joie de vivre. That’s what they can take away, the light part. This is about art and a great pairing. Isabella is great. What a great woman! Her laugh. She has the funniest expression on the planet.
“It’s been very difficult for me and others trying to conserve things because, of course, she tore things. She wore things, I mean she treated it like it wasn’t a collection; she just shoved it on the floor or tore her heels off. We found a heel in a pocket. We haven’t yet found the shoe, so I guess it’s a bit like Cinderella. She had a heart, which nobody had, or very few people have. And even that’s what I want people to take away, the actual beating heart of Isabella.
“She was more exact than I am. Her eye was incredible. She knew exactly what would go with what. Her proportions were quite different from what people would imagine. I mean she had a bust, she had a very thin waist, she was quite small. She got dressed to go out and she wouldn’t go out without lipstick and a hat, and that’s about it. She just got dressed. What a wardrobe. She was often late. She was a working person and she was really good at what she did and she would spend her days working so when she got dressed, she got dressed the same way we all get dressed. She wore the same thing on the bus or in the street or to a function. That was her. That was her way of being, but you’d never see her in pyjamas or something, or jeans. She was exact, but not exact. That was the genius – not being exact.
“Isabella had an incredible influence on Alexander McQueen, I mean huge. I wanted to show how influential she was on him. It is very important. It was also a huge influence on me … We come from very similar backgrounds. Our grandparents almost got married! We’d laugh at the same things, we had the same sense of ridiculousness, and joy and hope.
“I did music because I just can’t help it. You do things because you love them. It’s a way I have to deal with all of this. It’s all in the lyrics. You put on your headphones and you can just float away, float down a stream like the Beatles sang. You don’t have to worry about what people think or what they’re doing … My new album, Optimist in Black, was very, very hard, but it gets better. I end up in a better place.
“The name of the album is a song. I was going to call it something else, and then a friend of mine said: ‘Why not Optimist in Black?’, and I was like: ‘That’s the most complicated song of the whole album, the one I can’t deal with.’ But, I am an optimist in black, I think it seems.
“It was supposed to be a smaller exhibition then suddenly it was a big exhibition, and it caught me slightly offguard. I’m just trying to do what I can for Central Saint Martins, for suicide [prevention], because I love the people I was with… I prefer to have my friends around … and I guess in a way they are.
“I always thought it should be in Australia or in the Pacific and you know what, people are going to want to see this. When I first bought the collection, my dream – and it hasn’t been done yet – is being able to let people from all sides of the world look at Alexander [McQueen]’s stuff. It’s not about me. I never thought that it was going to come to Australia: it’s extraordinary. I mean, I had that idea for teenagers, for people who are studying design in Australia, it’s kind of great that they can touch these things. I hope they touch and look at the seams and see Alexander’s fingerprints in the seams. You can see it … quite seriously, his fingerprint.
“It’s not just about fashion, it’s not about a brand. What I would like people to take away is the friendship. When you see the friendship with Alexander [McQueen] with Hussein [Chalayan], there was friendship and that’s what everything is about, and a lot of hard work from all of those people. To see the humour, and to see the actual person, I hope that people can see that. She was truly great. I think people should be able to see the seam, they should be able to see all the things that I’ve described, the fingerprints – it’s all there. It’s a map of a friendship.” Isabella Blow: A Fashionable Life coincides with the start of Wool Week, a series of events and designer pop-ups to be held at Westfield Sydney. The exhibition runs from May 14 to August 28 at the Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences. To book, go to www.maas. museum/event/isabella-blow.