>> Isabella Blow, discoverer of Stella Tennant, Sophie Dahl, Hussein Chalayan, Philip Treacy, Alexander McQueen — and muse to the latter two — passed away at 48 a little over two years ago after ingesting weedkiller.  The motive was suspected to be a recent ovarian cancer diagnosis; Blow had a history of at least two suicide attempts, one involving her throwing herself from the elevated Hammersmith Flyover road in London.

Needless to say, there's a story to be told, and two different biographies, both scheduled for 2010, are in the works, reports the New York Observer. The first, Blow by Blow: The Story of Isabella Blow, is co-written by Isabella's husband of 18 years, Detmar Blow, and author Tom Sykes, who first met Isabella when he was 20 and his sister Plum Sykes was her assistant at Vogue.  

As Tom recalled, Blow told him he would be the first male supermodel and arranged for him to meet Mario Testino: “The next thing I knew, we were in the car on the way to a hotel in London to meet Mario. We stopped on the way to pick up Issie’s other latest discovery [who turned out to be then-unknown Sophie Dahl]. Mario decided that yes, Isabella was quite correct, and promptly photographed me for a story in Italian Vogue. But that’s as far as my supermodel career went.”

Sykes said that he plans to interview Blow's friends and colleagues in New York and in England — including Anna Wintour (Blow started out as her assistant), Hamish Bowles, and Andre Leon Talley — for his biography, which is tentatively slated for publication in Spring 2010.

The second biography, out in December 2010, was commissioned from Lauren Goldstein Crowe, former Portfolio.com fashion blogger and recent author of The Towering World of Jimmy Choo.  Says her publisher of the work: “We wanted someone to do the definitive bio of Isabella Blow — a really fun, juicy look at this personality within the fashion industry."