The new Surrealists

KARL PLEWKA: When you were growing up in England, were you always an individual?

ISABELLA BLOW: Yes. I was an anarchist at quite an early age. My mother was very bourgeois, and she hated the way I dressed.

KP: She did?

IB: She still does.

KP: Don't you come from a long line of eccentrics?

IB: Yes. My grandmother, for example, caught the largest tuna fish in European waters. And she was an expert in Pygmies. For their Who's Who entries, people usually put: "Hobbies: history, reading, fishing." She put: "Once a cannibal."

KP: What was school like for you?

IB: I went to this school, Heathfield, where I used to dress up. I was head of chapel. I'm actually mad about ritual. You know, all the altar hangings, anything that's camp like that I love. I wanted to be a nun. Actually, that's an interesting connection to David LaChapelle - "David of the church," more or less. Because he comes from a whole line of priests.

KP: How did you meet him, by the way?

IB: When he photographed me for Italian Vogue.

KP: Do you find creativity in your spiritual side?

IB: Yes, very much so. When you are little, church is the one place where your imagination can go crazy because there is nothing to do and you've got to sit in this place. I think church does help me enormously. Because death is a big thing, I'm afraid, for me. That's why David LaChapelle is really good to work with, because he is so happy and everything is balloons and women running around looking like Barbie. He's a very happy person. Apparently, he has to take pills to stop him from having too many ideas. He's totally hyperactive.

KP: What was your first job out of school?

IB: I did everything. I worked for this thing called Organization Unlimited, which was a cleaning company. I had to go clean houses from top to bottom.

KP: How did they pin you down to clean houses when they can't pin you down to get into the photo studio?

IB: It's all necessity, isn't it? I'll do a job if there's cash.

KP: Is your aim always to find something new?

IB: I don't really look. I often describe myself as a pig sniffing for truffles, but it's not like I go out on the hunt; it's more of an instinct.

KP: Six or seven years ago, you became known as this great fashion talentspotter. Do you instantly recognize a future fashion star?

IB: You're referring to Alexander McQueen. His success has been really great for my reputation because if that hadn't happened, I would have just been an eccentric and gone down the drain. But I don't like to say that I discover people. That can sound quite pretentious. In my view, the people who will succeed in fashion are the people who know how to cut. And who are sexy. My new thing is pornography, modern pornography. I am doing something extraordinary with David LaChapelle in that regard, a porno couture shoot. Whether it will work or not I don't know.

KP: But you've already been doing a little bit of that with David.

IB: David's a bit naughty because he likes everybody to look like Barbie dolls. But I really want him to have a different perspective on the girl. I want a more Lolita kind of thing.

KP: You see that in the Cowgirls pictures we're running in this issue. When we looked at them, we said Isabella has the guts to dress like the woman in her pictures, which most people don't. Do you feel like you're cheating if you don't feel you could wear something the way you styled it?

IB: I suppose I do.

KP: IS it Important for you to work with people who know what they're doing?

IB: Yes. But I don't interfere with the photography at all.

KP: Is it a great era now for bravery in styling?

IB: It depends on who you are working for and what your ideals are. I'm thirty-nine, so I've been styling for nearly twenty years. And I've really just started to make money, so I know what it's like to live avant-garde. But I think anyone can be a stylist. I think you can learn in thirty-five minutes.

KP: What makes a great photographer today?

IB: A great photographer creates an image that you just can't forget. Like any work of art, it attacks your heart and it gets your emotions going. It gives you an enormous sense of either pleasure or distress.

KP: Is being a voyeur a major part of what makes you good at what you do?

IB: The only part, really. That's why I have to have a very strong friendship with the person I am working with, like David. It has to be a mutual thing between the photographer and myself. And the model is obviously major.

KP: So what would be your dream shoot to work on?

IB: No clothes at all.

KARL PLEWKA: How did you and Isabella Blow arrive at the idea for the Cowgirls pictures we're running here?

DAVID LACHAPELLE: I was in London and Issie was like [English accent], "I want you to do cowgirls! Cowgirls!" I was like, Sure, whatever, although to me the pictures don't really look like cowgirls, except for one last bit of remaining fringe hanging off a boot, so somehow it became a cowgirl's bootee. But the thing is that Issie really has an alternative mind-set. We connect on that level. Things like cowgirls are talked about more in the abstract between us, but they are completely clear. If someone overheard us talking, it wouldn't really make sense. People from another field wouldn't have any clue what was going on, because her references are just so beyond, you know?