The Judges:
Lorraine Candy
Lorraine Candy was appointed Editor-in-Chief of ELLE in April 2004. She joined ELLE from Cosmopolitan where she was Editor-in-Chief for four years and her appointment was a major coup for Hachette Filipacchi UK, publisher of ELLE - the worlds' biggest-selling fashion magazine.
Lorraine is one of the finest magazine editors in the UK and she has brought flair, energy and a wealth of experience from her magazine and newspaper background to the job of editing ELLE. Since joining ELLE Lorraine has attracted exclusive cover shoots and interviews with leading A-list celebrities including, Keira Knightley, Oscar winning actress Hilary Swank, Desperate Housewife Eva Longoria and Kate Winslet. The Christmas issue of the magazine featured Victoria Beckham on its cover and an exclusive fashion fairytale love story inspired and choreographed by Tony Award-winning director and choreographer Matthew Bourne.
The 2005 ELLE Style Awards, Lorraine's first as Editor, was the best event to date and was attended by an impressive guest list of high profile celebs including award winners Cate Blanchett, Kylie Minogue, Daniel Craig, Matthew Williamson and Little Britain's David Walliams and Matt Lucas. The event achieved the highest level of publicity in its history.
Prior to editing Cosmopolitan Lorraine was Features Editor for The Times for one year working on the launch of Times 2 and Deputy Editor of The Times (Saturday) Magazine, when it was launched as a glossy title. She also edited B magazine, before which she was Assistant Editor of Marie Claire. Lorraine was also Woman's Editor of The Sun and Today newspapers and features writer for the Daily Mirror.
Lorraine began her career in journalism at the Cornish Times after leaving school at 16. She then moved to the Wimbledon News before joining the features desk on the Daily Mirror aged 21.
Lorraine has extensive broadcast experience and appeared as a judge on the first series of Channel 4's highly successful Model Behaviour and on Cosmopolitan's 50 Ways To Please Your Man/Woman programmes, which were her brainchild. She is a regular contributor to TV programmes based on celebrity lifestyle and appears as a panellist on C4's The Wright Stuff. Candy is married with two young daughters. ELLE magazine sells 203,584 copies every month (ABC January – June 2005).
Isabella Blow
A self-confessed eccentric and champion of many of this generation's fashion stars, the career path of Isabella Blow is a true inspiration; from a little girl trying on her mother's hats, she has grown to be one of the industry's most respected stylists.
Born Isabella Delves-Broughton in London in 1958, she lived in Cheshire until 21, during which fashion played a small part. Having studied at Heathfield school up to A Level, she enrolled in secretarial college before taking on a variety of odd jobs including cleaning and shop work. Hats, however, featured early. "My first memory of a hat is when I was eight years old and I tried on a giant pink hat of my mother's," she says. "There's a photograph of me and I look as happy as anything to be wearing it."
Blow moved to New York in 1979 to study Ancient Chinese Art at Columbia University, where she shared a room with Catherine Oxenburg, aka Amanda in Dynasty. A year later she abandoned her studies to move to West Texas to experience her first taste of fashion working for Guy Laroche.
In 1981, her big break came when she was introduced to the then fashion director of US Vogue, Anna Wintour, by Bryan and Lucy Ferry and the two bonded over Vita Sackville West.
She was hired first as Wintour's assistant and then to organise fashion shoots under the discerning eye of André Leon Talley, now US Vogue's Editor At Large, and was soon befriending the likes of Warhol and Basquiat, "who we were both in love with". In 1986, Blow returned to London to become assistant to Michael Roberts, then fashion director both of Tatler and The Sunday Times and, thanks to him, worked her way up to the position of Style Editor at Tatler.
In 1988 she met Detmar Blow at a wedding in Salisbury Cathedral. They became engaged just 16 days later and married in Gloucester Cathedral the following year.
It was around this time that she met one of her greatest fashion associates, Philip Treacy. He first came to her attention when he arrived at the Tatler offices in 1989 touting a green felt hat. "I was crazy for it so I phoned him at the Royal College of Art and asked him to make my wedding head-dress," she says. Shortly afterwards Treacy moved into a Belgravia basement belonging to Blow's mother-in-law, where he lived and worked for two years. As well as Philip Treacy, Blow is credited with discovering Alexander McQueen, Hussein Chalayan, Honor Fraser, Stella Tennant and Sophie Dahl, whom she described as a "blow-up doll with brains".
McQueen first caught Blow's eye when he presented his degree collection at the St Martins College graduation show. "I wanted everything in it," she says. "When I said, 'I know this sounds a bit weird but I want to buy the whole of your collection,' he offered to sell me a coat for £350. I said, 'That's a lot for a student.' And he said, 'But I made it.' In the end I bought it all for £5,000 but it took me a long time to pay for it." From 1993, Blow spent four years at British Vogue, where she produced features such as the famous London Babes shoot, in which Steven Meisel photographed Honor Fraser, Stella Tennant, Bella Freud and Plum Sykes in various locations around London. She went on to become Fashion Director of The Sunday Times Style magazine, where she spent four years. Today, she works as fashion director of Tatler, and consults for Dupont Lycra, Lacoste and Swarovski, which she has reinvented with a little help from Treacy, McQueen and Julien Macdonald. In 2002, she became the subject of an extraordinary exhibition at the London Design Museum featuring all the hats made for her by Treacy. A book by Treacy, When Philip met Isabella, featuring photographs and sketches of her in some of her most outrageous and memorable outfits, was launched at the same time.
All pics and text from skyone.co.uk
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