The legendary fashion editor Isabella Blow is remembered by her hats. A jewel-encrusted lobster which snaked back from her brow like a crustacean mohican. A miniature Chinese garden, complete with tiny eaved pagodas and lilliputian cherry trees with quivering blossoms. Her trademark was so distinctive that Princess Margaret once greeted her at a party with the words: “Good evening, Hat.” At her funeral in 2007, an 18th-century black galleon headpiece with delicate lace sails cascading from its lofty prow, created for her by her favourite milliner Philip Treacy, crowned her coffin on a bed of white roses.
But The Queen of Fashion, a newly announced biopic directed by Alex Marx with the Oscar-nominated actor Andrea Riseborough cast in the title role, is set to highlight Blow’s more serious role as a central figure in a golden age of British fashion, a kingmaker who launched the career of Alexander McQueen, and a powerhouse who helped put 1990s London at the centre of the creative world.
