BY ROYAL APPOINTMENT

 

Previously unseen water colour sketches by Norman Hartnell 

The London Fashion and Textile Museum intoduces a retrospective of couture by royal appointment.
The designs of Norman Hartnell to Hardy Amies will be featured.

More than 150 outfits, including ballgowns, cocktail dresses and ready-to-wear designs worn by British high society - often taking its lead from the monarch - will feature in the exhibition at London’s Fashion and Textile Museum.

Before Hartnell opened his first boutique in Mayfair in 1923, there was little tradition of British haute couture. But after becoming a favourite with Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother, and her daughters, Princesses Elizabeth and Margaret, his creations gained a legion fans.

Hartnell achieved worldwide fame with his designs for the Queen’s wedding dress in 1947 and her Coronation gown in 1953.

Samples of Hartnell’s embroidery designed for dresses worn by the Queen for overseas state visits during the 1950s and 1960s will also be included.

Creations by Sir Hardy Amies will also feature in the exhibition. Amies, who began his career in the 1930s at the London tailors, Lachasse, started designing for the Queen in the early 1950s and continued until a year before his death in 2003. 

 He was credited with transforming her daytime wardrobe with sharp, tailored coats, dresses and jackets. For her first ever televised Christmas message in 1957, she wore an Amies dress featuring a sweetheart neckline and a bow bodice.

The Queen further brought British fashion to worldwide attention in 1953, when she marked the beginning of her reign with her longest ever overseas tour of the Commonwealth, which lasted from November 1953 to May 1954 and spanned 13 countries.  

Dressed in more than 100 new outfits by Hartnell and Amies, the tour saw her become an international trend-setter as the most photographed woman in the world.
 
The exhibition will also feature hats by the Australian-born milliner, Frederick Fox, whose designs have been worn by the Queen, the Queen Mother and Princess Diana.

Michael Pick, a biographer of Hartnell and Amies and guest curator of the exhibition, said: “After the Second World War, society still went to Paris for their clothes, but the Queen gave confidence to British women to buy British designers.

“As a young, beautiful and photogenic woman in the 1950s and 1960s, she was a fashion leader and her circle and the wider public wanted to look like her.  

“The consummate skills of Hartnell, Amies and Fox - seen worldwide through the patronage of the Royal family - helped to re-assert Britain’s reputation as an international centre for fashion.”  

Hartnell to Amies: Couture by Royal Appointment is at the Fashion and Textile Museum, November 16 to February 23, 2013




             
              Wedding Dress Lady Glenconner by Norman Hartnell

              
               Norman Hartnell

              A model wears Hardy Amies