Fashion guru's weedkiller suicide

Ms Blow was said to be haunted by a series of personal tragedies

Fashion icon Isabella Blow killed herself by drinking weedkiller, a coroner has ruled.

Mrs Blow, 48 and the fashion director of Tatler magazine, had tried to kill herself three times, before drinking more than 20 times the fatal dose.

Her sister, Lavinia, told the hearing in Gloucester that Mrs Blow had jumped off a bridge, rammed her car into a lorry and taken an overdose of tablets.

Mrs Blow died at her home near Stroud on 7 May.

Gloucestershire coroner Alan Crickmore recorded a verdict of suicide after hearing that she told hospital staff she wanted to die.

'Personal tragedies'

Mrs Blow was said to have been haunted by a series of personal tragedies, including watching her brother drown when he was two and she was four, and being cut out of her father's will.

Pathologist Professor Neil Shepherd gave the cause of death as poisoning.

The hearing was told Mrs Blow began suffering from depression five or six years ago.'

She had been released from a psychiatric hospital four days before her death.

Her husband Detmar Blow did not attend the inquest and no statement from him was read out in court.