The beer heiress, fashion muse and philanthropist is set to release her first album, Optimist in Black, on May 27 and judging by the lyrics of her latest single she is using music as a new mode of self expression, mirroring Beyonce's efforts with Lemonade.

The dandified haute couture collector is in Australia to open the new Isabella Blow: A Fashionable Life exhibition at the Powerhouse's Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences and is excitedly anticipating her deeply personal musical debut that was produced by David Bowie's producer Tony Visconti.

"To me it was always about the music, which was always difficult for me in the fashion world, because of the lack of music," she told Fairfax Media. "Funnily enough it was why I liked going to the shows and thank god there were decent enough DJs. I find it really difficult just sitting there being bombarded with visuals, I'm much more of an aural person. So that's why I look like a mess half the time."

A mess she is not, more like a "slightly deranged fairy invented by C. S. Lewis" - as the New Yorker once described her - who is rarely seen out of her favourite Noritaka Tatehana glittery, heel-less, sky high platform boots.

Her music touches on the death of her friends Alexander McQueen and fashion editor Blow as well as her personal life, which has been the subject of tabloid fodder for decades.

"Did you have to do what you did to me to make you feel better?" she sings in The Long Now. "All those lies, all those lies. You promised me blue skies but no sunny days, the weather just got wetter...You don't know what to do with a girl like me in a tight sweater."

The inspiration for the song could be one of two people. Her long time, on-again, off-again boyfriend, French philosopher Bernard-Henri Levy or her ex-husband Spyros Niarchos, the son of Greek shipping billionaire, Stavros.

Guinness, 48, was planning to study music after high school, but at 19 met Niarchos during a skiing holiday. The pair were quickly married in 1987 and have three children. After their highly publicised nuptials she disappeared from public life making rare cameos at the Chanel and Valentino couture shows in Paris. However she cannot recall their 13 year union.

"That must have been someone else. I'm so forgetful," she told Fairfax Media when asked about her marriage.

The couple divorced in 2000, in which she reportedly received a $39 million settlement and relocated back to London where her friends, including Blow, welcomed her with open arms.

"She had been in this jewelled Faberge cage, which turned into a pressure cooker, and then she came out of it like Venus on the half shell," her best friend, art dealer Robin Hurlstone said.

Since then she has immersed herself in the creative and fashion communities, morphed into "the most stylish woman alive" and become Karl Lagerfeld's muse. In 2008 she auctioned some of her clothes after a "spring clean" and raised more than $200,000 for Womankind, a charity which aims to end violence against women.

After Blow's death in 2007 she established The Isabella Blow Foundation, a charity which supports aspiring art and fashion students through scholarships and facilitates research into depression and mental health.

In 2012 she held another auction and used the profits to purchase all 500 objects found in Blow's wardrobe - 172 pieces of which will be showcased in Australia from May 14.

"She gave me friendship. We had a laugh, it was never about fashion. We never discussed fashion. It's not like we sat around talking about labels, god forbid, we talked about the creativity and students coming through," she said.