McQueen and Blow Were a Star-Crossed Pair

NICE, France (Feb. 11) – Hollywood would be hard-pressed to imagine a star-crossed pair as eccentric, flamboyant and ultimately tragic as bad-boy fashion designer Alexander McQueen and Isabella Blow, the top fashion magazine editor and style icon who was his mentor and muse.

But count on a movie called "Alexander and Isabella" coming to theaters someday – because their story, made more poignant and powerful by the news Thursday of McQueen's death, has it all, right down to the quintessentially British trait of being rooted in class differences.

The twisted tale of two larger-than-life eccentrics at the pinnacle of haute couture who committed suicide within three years of each other is more like something out of an F. Scott Fitzgerald novel than the Twitter era.

ALSO SEE: Top British Designer Alexander McQueen Commits Suicide

McQueen, 40, hanged himself at the peak of his career, despite scant indication that he suffered from chronic despair. Blow was 48 when she killed herself in May 2007 with a powerful weedkiller after being diagnosed with ovarian cancer and suffering a long struggle with depression. Her career fading, she had at that point already attempted suicide, reportedly once throwing herself off a bridge, trying to drown herself in a lake and taking an overdose of pills.

"They were both wild, they were rebels and they were unafraid to be who they were," said Patrick Van Ommeslaeghe, a designer at Jil Sander in Paris. "But sometimes the truly daring people are also the most sensitive and take life very hard."

McQueen, who was openly gay, had a wedding ceremony to his then-partner, filmmaker George Forsyth, in Ibiza on a yacht owned by a Gambian prince. Blow struggled in her second marriage to Detmar Blow – he briefly ran off with a lesbian, she had a affair with a Venetian gondolier – before they reconciled.

Though early speculation centered on whether McQueen had been depressed over Blow's suicide, Van Ommeslaeghe was among those who believe the trigger was the death of McQueen's mother last week.

"It was the loss of his mother," said Van Ommeslaeghe. "That madness that can come over sensitive people."

But it was bravado and genius that fueled the remarkable careers of both McQueen and Blow.

McQueen, the son of an East End taxi driver, left school to apprentice as a tailor on Savile Row where his early clients included Mikhail Gorbachev and Prince Charles.

One of the anecdotes helpful in building his legend as an enfant terrible was that he left obscene handwritten notes in the pockets of Prince Charles' clothes. By 1996 he was the head designer at Givenchy and often used shock tactics on the runway, like having double-amputee model Aimee Mullins glide in on elaborate wooden legs.

Blow, a stylist for magazines like Tatler, was known for wearing outrageous hats, startling red smears of lipstick and 5-inch heels. She came from an English aristocratic family that at the turn of the 20th century owned a castle and 34,000 acres in Cheshire before the fortune was lost to gambling debts.

Her grandfather, Sir Jock, was implicated in the famous "White Mischief" murder in Kenya. He later killed himself, as did Blow's father-in-law; she inherited less than 5,000 pounds.

Blow made her own way in 1979 to New York, where she managed to get a job as an assistant to Anna Wintour at Vogue. She eventually moved back to London, where she discovered models Stella Tennant and Sophie Dahl as well as McQueen.

Blow launched McQueen when she spotted his graduation collection from a London fashion school and bought it all for about $8,000.

She also was instrumental in brokering a deal between McQueen's company and Gucci but reportedly got no compensation for making the lucrative partnership happen.

"He's become a multimillionaire," Blow once said of McQueen. "Oh, he's got it all stashed away. His nest is all piled up with stuff. Everything is money. And he always says that's all I ever think about, and that's unfair."

McQueen later denied the two had fallen out over the Gucci deal, calling such speculation "so much bollocks." He dedicated his spring-summer 2008 collection to Blow.