Godammit, I’m Mad!

Fashion iconoclast Isabella Blow has died at the age of 48, supposedly of cancer. But because of her history, those who knew her believe it was suicide.

One magazine source says: “She tried to kill herself again last week and drank bleach, then on another occasion she tried to jump out of [her husband] Detmar ’s car.” Self-administered poison was the leading theory among the New York fashionistas who gathered for the annual Met Costume Institute’s Benefit Gala.

In 2005, Blow tried to kill herself by jumping off a London bridge. After breaking her feet and no longer being able to wear any of her 280 pairs of spiked heels, she was inundated by gifts of flat shoes from Manolo Blahnik and Christian Laboutin. Fellow style icon Victoria Beckham, on hearing of the 2005 suicide attempt, famously declared: “What genius!” (What the hell did she mean by that? If only I knew.)

Designer friend Zac Posen notes, “Thoughts of suicide were a big part of her existence and her persona.”

Isabella’s grandfather killed himself after disgracing the family in a scandal that was the center of the “White Mischief” case. When she was four, her saw her younger brother drown in an outdoor pool. Later, she and her sisters were abandoned by their mother, who shook their hands before leaving.

Headhunted by Vogue and Tatler, she was in her element. When she met aristocrat art dealer Detmar Blow at a society wedding in 1988, she seemed to have found her niche. Bohemian and colorful, Blow’s family were as acquainted with tragedy as her own, his father having killed himself by drinking weedkiller.

When Detmar had an affair with a “diminutive lesbian author,” Isabella was crushed. She got even by sleeping with a penniless gondolier in Venice.

Her robust views on models, designers and the world in general would be delivered in a very loud, cut-glass English voice, punctuated by incongruous obscenities, sexual innuendoes and flagrant namedropping. Working for Anna Wintour at Vogue magazine, she instilled fear in young women who might not live up to her standards of style.

“If you don’t wear lipstick I can’t talk to you,” she was known to declare in a booming voice.

The lipstick quote alone is enough to make me love and mourn this woman, who defined the art of being a grand eccentric. I wonder how that moron Victoria Beckham will react.

While I’m waiting for the Kate Moss collection to go up on the Barneys website, I checked out the latest arrivals at a shop called Creatures of Comfort. I’ve never been to the real boutique on Melrose Ave. in L.A. but I enjoy looking at the clothes. I find most of it baffling, and uniquely awful. I’ve read that this store is known for carrying “avant garde designers.”

Obviously, I don’t get it. I think these fashions look like stuff to wear in a mental hospital. The Kate Moss stuff isn’t very interesting but at least I can imagine wearing it, even though I’m way too old. Plus, it’s much more affordable.

A new documentary called “Zoo” sounds too preposterous to be for real, but it’s not a joke. The work of someone named Robertson Devor,  its subject is bestiality (whose practitioners call themselves zoophiles.)

Based on several reviews, the film sounds like a demented satire of NAMLA , but by all accounts, it is an effort to depict a taboo subculture without making judgments. It is described as visually impressionistic and arresting, with a moody score reminiscent of Philip Glass. It was inspired by an incident that took place in Seattle a few years ago: A 45 year old man died after having sex with a horse, observed and videotaped by two like-minded friends.

Call me intolerant, but guys who get together to mate with Arabian stallions are not okay, and don’t have a case, period. But this film allows their whining voices to be heard. “It’s much like you love your wife and kids,” one zoo guy explains. Uh huh.

“You’re not gonna be able to ask them about the latest Madonna album,” another one notes, describing his relationship with horses. “They’re not gonna know the difference between Tolstoy and Keats. It’s a very simple, plain kind of world, and for the moment you can kind of switch off.” Hm. This sounds like most of the guys I went out with before I got married. But they were all bipeds.

“I don’t need a high level of interaction, whether it be human or otherwise,” says another horse-lover, not unlike the guys my best friend keeps meeting in bars. It’s the “otherwise” that’s kind of, um, fucked up.

If the zoo guys seem oblivious to the animals’ feelings and dignity, one of them assures the filmmaker that the horses “are happy to participate.” “They’re hittin’ on you!” declares another.

Some reviews of this film are amazingly sympathetic. It’s classy, it’s lyrical, bla bla bla. One calls it “unexpectedly troubling.” Goodness!  There’s a reviewer who needs a vacation.

I must say, I am almost tempted to go and see “Zoo” which just opened at a popular art-house theater in my city. But I’m the type who yells stuff at the TV. I don’t think I could sit through the screening without laughing hysterically, or at least shouting an impassioned “As if!”

Here’s what really bothers me about the Phil Spector case. A friend of Lana Clarkson saw her shopping at Norstrom in the Grove (a trendy L.A. outdoor mall) on the day she was murdered. Lana was shopping for shoes, because she said her new job required her to be on her feet all night. She was looking for something comfortable.

What a fucking world. You go to Nordstrom for shoes and you end up with your head blown off. The defense would like to establish that Lana Clarkson was ‘depressed’, which accounts for her ‘suicide.’ Anybody anywhere could tell you that (1) if you’re suicidal, you don’t buy shoes. And (2) When you buy shoes from Nordstrom, you are not only desirous of life, but you absolutely don’t want those shoes to be splattered with your brains at the end of an evening.

The lesson to learn from this crime is simple: Never go home with a pint-sized psychotic drunk, even if he lives in a castle.

Poor Lana. I will think of her whenever I go to Nordstrom. Maybe there’s a good one in Heaven, like the New Nordstrom in Topanga Plaza, which has its own Chanel Boutique.

Rest in Peace, Lana. One day I hope to meet you, in the cosmetics department.