Fashion world mourns eccentric style icon, talent spotter

The fashion world was in mourning Tuesday for the revered style icon and eccentric Isabella Blow, who always stood out from the crowd with her trademark extravagant hats.

Blow, who died from cancer on Sunday, aged 48, had an unerring gift for discovering new talents -- notably Alexander McQueen, whose career she launched -- and the aristocratic models Stella Tennant and Honor Fraser.

But her most famous association was with the Irish milliner Philip Treacy. On the strength of a green felt hat "like crocodile teeth" she set him up in a basement flat belonging to a relative to nurture his fledgling career and was rarely seen in public without one of his creations on her head.

London's Design Museum dedicated a whole show to their relationship in 2002, called "When Philip met Isabella".

She bought all the pieces in the then unknown McQueen's graduation show at Central Saint Martins, paying out 5,000 pounds, which she could ill afford, in 100 pound weekly instalments.

Others she championed included designers Hussein Chalayan and Julien MacDonald and the curvaceous model Sophie Dahl, whom she described as "a blow-up doll with brains."

Born Isabella Delves Broughton into a family of noted eccentrics, her grandfather Sir Jock Delves Broughton was at the centre of the "White Mischief" scandal in Kenya, acquitted of the murder of Lord Erroll but later committing suicide.

She also enjoyed joking about her grandmother who listed herself as a cannibal in "Who's Who" after being served human flesh in Papua New Guinea.

Abandoning early ambitions to be a nun, she trained as a secretary, getting her big break in fashion when she was introduced by rock star Bryan Ferry and his wife Lucy to the editor of American Vogue, Anna Wintour.

She went to work for Wintour, who led tributes to Blow in The Times, describing her as "a free spirit that really believed in individual talent."

"In a world that's largely driven by corporate culture, she was a joy to have," she said.

Treacy told the Guardian: "She often saw herself as a piglet looking for truffles - we were all truffles to her, me, Alexander MacQueen, Stella Tennant. Sophie Dahl, all of us."

Her last job was as fashion director for the society magazine Tatler, whose editor told the Guardian: "She didn't do dull, she didn't do unoriginal - she was always just dazzlingly imaginative, creative, unexpected."