Isabella Blow | Source: The New York Observer

In Part 1 of this exclusive excerpt from the afterword of Isabella Blow: A Life in Fashion, Lauren Goldstein Crowe examined the widespread allegations that fashion was to blame for the tragic suicide of Isabella Blow. Today, in part 2, she looks at whether these allegations actually point to the fact that the fashion industry suffers from an image problem.

LONDON, United Kingdom — Isabella Blow and Alexander McQueen toiled in an industry notable for its high profile. These days, even magazine stylists are household names thanks to the onslaught of reality TV shows. The deaths of Isabella and Alexander made news because they were recognizable names, not because they were an example of an industry-wide epidemic.

The fashion industry is just that — an industry — but people seem to hold it to a higher standard than they would another industry. Would people complain that not enough farmers came forward to help when one of their own is in trouble? Some people are able to deal with the obvious hypocrisy in the industry, just as some lawyers are able to deal with the hypocrisy in theirs. And those who can’t, leave. David LaChapelle stopped taking fashion photographs four years ago at a time, he said, “when it was raining money.” He thought he’d move into something like farming, but then art galleries began calling him. He hoped that Isabella would be able to make the same shift, but even if she had, a change of career alone would not have saved her.

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Alexander McQueen and Isabella Blow | Photo: David LaChapelle for Vanity Fair

The brilliantly eccentric, beautiful and iconic Isabella Blow lived fashion like no other. In the wake of her tragic suicide in 2007, she has inspired a film, a play and two books, including Isabella Blow: A Life in Fashion, a biography by friend of BoF Lauren Goldstein Crowe that’s to be released early next week. Today, in the first of a two part series, we bring you an exclusive excerpt from the book’s Afterword in which Ms. Goldstein Crowe asks the question: Did fashion kill Isabella Blow?

LONDON, United Kingdom — When I began the research for Isabella Blow: A Life in Fashion, I was surprised to find that many in the fashion world viewed her suicide not as a tragedy but as a whodunit. Everyone had a theory. Some thought it was the fault of her employer Condé Nast or her husband Detmar for not supporting her enough when she became ill. Some thought it was the fault of Alexander McQueen for not giving her a job when he got posted at Givenchy. Some thought it was Sheikh Majed al-Sabah’s fault for disappointing her on a project he’d retained her to do. Many others blamed her mother, her step-mother or her father. As the daughter of a psychologist, all these theories seemed equally absurd to me.

But as strange as those theories were, the one that came from outside fashion was even stranger. Many members of the press decided another group was to blame: the fashion industry. That’s right, all of us. Here, in a BoF exclusive two-part excerpt from the Afterword of my book, I do the unconscionable. I defend fashion. … Continue Reading

Prada flagship store in Omotesando, Tokyo

LONDON, United Kingdom — The scariest news I have recently read about luxury was in Tuesday’s Financial Times. The Japanese, it seems, have stopped buying luxury goods. Luxury imports in Japan were down 10 percent and sales of LVMH in the country were down 18 percent in the first quarter.

And no, it’s not just the recession. “This is not a blip. This is a long-term shift in the market,” Brian Salsberg, the author of a McKinsey report on the Japanese luxury goods market, the world’s second largest, told the Financial Times. This is concrete evidence of a trend first reported on BoF one year ago.

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Zandra Rhodes for Marks & Spencer

LONDON, United Kingdom — She may have given up the boyfriend and lost the company, but Noelle Reno, the founder of Degrees of Freedom with ex-boyfriend Matthew Mellon, has retained her love of working in fashion. After a year hiatus in the wake of the separation (during which she filed suit against Mellon in Manhattan Superior Court), she’s back in London and hard at work on her next fashion project—trying to grow Zandra Rhodes into a global lifestyle brand.

“She belongs up there with Vivienne Westwood,” Reno told The Business of Fashion. “She set so many trends.”

Rhodes’ recent successful collaborations with Top Shop and Marks & Spencer convinced Reno that now is an opportune time to seize upon what she sees as the growing public interest in the Zandra Rhodes brand. “Zandra Rhodes is already a luxury, lifestyle brand and we are simply working on expanding product categories that offers quality and value,” Reno said. “Zandra has enjoyed working on the collaborations with major retailers and in focusing again on her core business.”

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American Apparel ad

LONDON, United Kingdom — Here’s a depressing sign of things to come. According to Luxury Briefing, Trendhunter has deemed “Shockvertising” a key trend for 2009.

What’s Shockvertising? Advertising that borders on porn. Yes, you can blame the credit crunch. If consumers won’t be lured be grace and beauty, well let’s give them smut and see if that works.

And it could work. Just look at the success of American Apparel. The clothes aren’t much different from what you’d find at Primark, Wal-Mart or Uniqlo (although they’re made in the U.S.) but the ads featuring scantily clad teens and notable public figures like Woody Allen have attracted the attention of consumers. Allen himself is none too pleased to be a billboard for the brand. He’s launched a lawsuit against the company saying that it used his face in an ad without his permission, or any remuneration, and that it is damaging to his reputation.

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