They first met at his degree show at St Martin's, where he offered to sell her a coat for ?350, and she ended up buying the entire collection for ?5,000.
Blow's family had been country landowners for 600 years, but her grandfather, Sir Jock Delves Broughton, sold most of it to pay gambling debts. He moved to Kenya where he was acquitted of murdering Lord Erroll, but later killed himself — the White Mischief scandal, the subject of innumerable articles, books and a film.
In 1981, having abandoned her studies of Ancient Chinese Art at Columbia University, she worked briefly for the designer Guy Laroche before being introduced by Bryan and Lucy Ferry to Anna Wintour, then fashion director of US Vogue; she later claimed they bonded over a shared love of the work of Vita Sackville-West. She became a personal assistant, then a stylist and commissioner of fashion shoots at Vogue, and then returned to London where she worked on British Vogue and became fashion director at the Sunday Times and later Tatler.
Her final year proved to be a difficult time; she was frequently depressed and had only recently discovered that she had cancer. Her downtime was at home in Gloucestershire, Greig said. "She was a real country girl at heart, just as happy going for a walk in gumboots and a hat as on the front row in Paris or New York."
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