Isabella Blow honored with London exhibition

Fashion editor Isabella Blow was perhaps best known for finding and nurturing emerging talents including Hussein Chalayan, Philip Treacy and Alexander McQueen (she famously purchased his whole graduate collection, carrying pieces away in plastic bin bags). 

A collaboration between the Isabella Blow Foundation (set up by friends including Daphne Guinness after Blow’s sad death in 2007), and the famed Central Saint Martins fashion school, the “Fashion Galore!” exhibition will explore her archive pieces and her enduring legacy.  

“This exhibition is, to me, a bittersweet event. Isabella Blow made our world more vivid, trailing colour with every pace she took. It is a sorrier place for her absence,” said Guinness. “When I visited her beloved clothes in a storage room in South Kensington, it seemed quite clear the collection would be of immense value to a great many people. I do believe that in choosing to exhibit them we’ve done the right thing — and that it is what she would have wanted. I am doing this in memory of a dear friend, in the hope that her legacy may continue to aid and inspire generations of designers to come,” she added.

The show has been curated by Alistair O’Neill with Shonagh Marshall. Recent exhibitions at Somerset House have included the Valentino retrospective, “Valentino: Master of Couture,” and the Tim Walker show “Story Teller” which ran from October 2012 to January 2013. 

“Isabella Blow: Fashion Galore!” runs from November 20 to March 2.