Per the log line, the film “details the ups and downs of Blow’s life championing unknown and marginalized fashion figures like Alexander McQueen, Philip Treacy, and Sophie Dahl, whom she catapulted to success while struggling with undiagnosed bipolar disorder.”
Born in London, Blow moved to New York in her early 20s to study at Columbia, before dropping out and relocating to Texas, where she worked for Guy Laroche. In the ’80s, she returned to Manhattan and was hired as an assistant to Anna Wintour, then Vogue’s fashion director, and went on to assist André Leon Talley. In this period, she befriended Andy Warhol and Jean-Michel Basquiat, among other New York luminaries. In 1986, she came back to London to work for Tatler’s Michael Roberts, and began wearing Treacy’s outlandish hats, even letting him use her London flat to work on his collections. She also discovered McQueen, buying the renegade designer’s entire graduate collection for £5,000. She went on to become Tatler’s fashion director.
Blow had struggles with depression and was later diagnosed with bipolar disorder, for which she received electroshock therapy. She also battled ovarian cancer. In the final years of her life, she attempted suicide several times, and eventually took her own life in 2007, aged 48.
Joining Riseborough in this decades-spanning true tale will be Emilia Clarke as her childhood friend, the socialite and fashion muse Daphne Guinness; Richard E. Grant as her father, Evelyn Delves Broughton, with whom she had a difficult relationship which led to her being disinherited; Normal People’s Fionn O’Shea as Philip Treacy; and Hayley Atwell as former British Vogue editor Alexandra Shulman. Casting continues, however, for the parts of Blow’s husband, Detmar Blow; her mother, Helen Delves Broughton; Michael Roberts; and Alexander McQueen. The Hollywood battle to play the latter begins now.