Bored with the rain and looking for
something interesting to do? Get
yourself along to Somerset House to see their really great exhibition:
‘Isabella Blow: Fashion Galore!’ before it comes to an end on 2 March.
Isabella Blow led an extravagant life in her
work, her home and the clothes she wore and this exhibition gives a great
insight into her unique character.
Attributed with discovering great talents and models, we get to see
Alexander McQueen’s clothes from his very first graduation collection, where
Isabella first discovered him, right through to his Oct 2008 collaborative
runway show with Philip Treacy ‘La Dame Bleue” which was dedicated to Isabella
after her shocking death. We also get up
close and personal with Philip Treacy’s creations – before this exhibition I
had not seen much of his work and was absolutely blown away by its beauty and
elegance!
My favourite part of the exhibition by far,
was a look into Isabella Blow’s fantastic and slightly outrageous wardrobe –
this, along with little notes about Isabella’s life and fun facts such as her
favourite shade of red lipstick, her preference for writing with pink ink and
how clumsy and forgetful she was (apparently, like me, she often left things in
taxi’s) makes the whole exhibition more personal and intimate.
In the final section, we see selected
clothes from the “La Dame Bleue” catwalk, accompanied nearby with a video of
the runway show playing on a large screen.
This is where we can see the static exhibition come to life in a
beautiful show themed around flying birds, which was one of Isabella’s
fascinations and therefore a fitting tribute.
This bit really pulls on your heartstrings. What a unique personality and complex life,
and what a sad ending for someone with such energy and passion.
Really beautiful. Really worth you time. Go even if it isn’t raining.
