If you read about/worship/are part of a certain level of the fashion world, you know who Isabella Blow is. If you’re trolling the racks at T.J. Maxx or choosing between the different fits of Faded Glory jeans at Wal-mart chances are excellent you don’t know who Isabella Blow. And if you’re Blacklight you pick up Blow By Blow from the dining room table and ask why the person on the cover looks like they belong on “that weird drag queen show you watch…how come every one on there is gay?”<cue RuPaul’s head EXPLODING from the sheer derp> .

Isabella Blow was a creature that didn’t belong in our time or place. Perhaps it’s best to imagine her in the 1920s Paris, having tea with Chanel herself or in the 1930s having Elsa design an amazing dress. A person who loves fashion so much and walked about sporting extreme hats is in the wrong time and place.

Besides cover art and a title that jumps of the shelf Blow By Blow is the attempt of a grieving husband to explain and make sense of his late wife’s life. Isabella Blow’s life at any point could have come straight from a book. Her early years as a peer’s eldest daughter have a Barbara Pym meets Angela Thirkell meets Barbara Vine meets Nancy Mitford quality. Her early American years a Pat Booth bonkbuster (Pat Booth author of Palm Beach/creator of Her Highness Lisa The White Trash With The Conical Tits and Heart-Shaped Ass). Her New York years a Tama Janowitz story, her London years a Wendy Holden novel with a dark turn.

But the reader needs to be careful before jumping in. If you don’t have pre-existing knowledge of the fashion world of the 1980 onward or easily understand the world of the English peer you’re going to have a rough time reading. If you skew Blacklight (nerd boy who worships Stephen R. Donaldson) put down the book and walk away. But if you’re more girl Anglophile me, give it a try. The lady under the hats was as extreme as her clothes and just as fragile.