Fiennes to marry Jagger’s book dealer after split with Blow
HER suicide devastated her family and the nation’s fashion industry, but eccentric style icon Isabella Blow’s widower, Detmar, felt that he had finally found happiness again when he got engaged to film director Martha Fiennes, sister of Hollywood actors Joseph and Ralph.
Now, however, I can disclose that barrister and art dealer Detmar has been left heartbroken after their engagement was broken off.
And, to add insult to injury, Martha tells me she has already got engaged to another man. Her new fiance is rare book dealer Simon Finch, 65. ‘I am in a relationship with Simon, and we’re engaged,’ she confirms.
Unlike her engagement to Blow, 58, which was announced in 2016, she’s wasting no time in exchanging vows with Finch, who sells books to clients said to include Sir Mick Jagger and Hollywood star Whoopi Goldberg. ‘We’re going to get married in July next year,’ Finch tells me. ‘It just felt like the right thing to do; we get on so well.’
In 2020, Finch was going out with Paddington film producer Alexandra Derbyshire. He has an adult son from a previous marriage.
While Blow has Hilles, the captivating Arts and Crafts house in Gloucestershire built by his grandfather, Finch owns another of the country’s finest Art and Crafts properties: the 33-room Voewood, near Holt in Norfolk. He and Fiennes will hold their wedding there.
Finch does not mention the engagement ring. After Blow proposed to Fiennes, she said of her sparkler: ‘It’s a really unbelievable diamond ring with a Mogul emerald. It’s like a spaceship.’ Martha, 58, who directed brother Ralph in Chromophobia and Onegin, has never been married despite trying for 20 years to persuade her long-term partner, film director George Tiffin, to tie the knot. They had three children before splitting in 2011, after which Martha started dating hedge fund tycoon Issam Kabbani, to whom she got engaged though the relationship collapsed soon after. Detmar was married to Isabella, famous for discovering model Sophie Dahl and designer Alexander McQueen, from 1989 until her tragic death in 2007 at the age of 48. A year later, he started dating Brazilian artist Mara Castilho, with whom he had a son, Sasha, but Mara upped sticks to Portugal in 2011 barely a year after they wed.