Isabella Blow dies at 48

Five years ago the Design Museum held an exhibition called When Philip Met Isabella which marked the relationship between Isabella and Philip Treacy.

When she married lawyer Detmar Blow at Gloucester Cathedral in 1989 she wore a headdress created by the then unknown Treacy. This was the start of a long friendship for having discovered the milliner she made his hats her trademark.

Izzie, as she was known, until recently lived in Waterloo's Theed Street where, appropriately, the tiny houses are believed to have been built for hatters employed at 18th-century hat factories in nearby Hatfields. She was a familiar figure with a loud voice and usually in a striking hat and high heel shoes. The couple found the house, shared with their dog Alfie, too small for the hat collection and entertaining and had just moved across the river to Westminster.

Isabella, who was the granddaughter of photographer, explorer and hunter Lady Vera Delves Broughton, grew up living in a cottage which had a view of the former family home Donnington Castle. It had been sold to pay her grandfather's gambling debts.