Tea at Trianon: Norman Hartnell: The Queen’s Favourite Couturier

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Thursday, November 10, 2022

Norman Hartnell: The Queen’s Favourite Couturier

Wedding Gown

From Vogue:

Few couturiers are more closely associated with the British royal family than Norman Hartnell. Born in Streatham to a pair of wine merchants, he became devoted to fashion as a young boy while watching musicals in London’s West End, spending his days recreating the costumes he had seen at home in watercolour paint. The flair for sartorial drama he established then never left him, with Hartnell famously declaring at the height of his career: “I despise simplicity; it is the negation of all that is beautiful.”
It was while studying Modern Languages at Cambridge that he began making costumes for Footlights productions, working alongside Cecil Beaton – until the Evening Standard published a fateful review of his work. “Is the dress genius of the future now at Cambridge?” wrote journalist Minnie Hogg. “The frocks in The Bedder’s Opera given by the Footlights Dramatic Club yesterday set me thinking as to whether Mr N B Hartnell wasn’t contemplating conquering feminine London with original gowns.”
Fast forward a few years, and that’s exactly what he did, having dropped out of Cambridge after reading Hogg’s prophecy. Throughout the ’20s, Hartnell designed his signature embellished pieces for the well-heeled friends he had met at university, establishing himself as a favourite of debutantes and Bright Young Things during the London season. As Hollywood stars became as fashionable as society girls, Vivien Leigh and Marlene Dietrich also appeared in his romantic designs – further contributing to his international popularity.
By the mid-1930s, Hartnell’s frothy creations had grown so popular that he relocated from his studio to a Mayfair townhouse on Bruton Street, and his relationship with the royal family began in earnest. In 1935, Lady Alice Montagu Douglas Scott asked the young creative to make not only her wedding gown for her marriage to the Duke of Gloucester, but also her bridesmaids’ outfits. Included in her wedding party? Both Princess Elizabeth and Princess Margaret. (Read more.)

Wedding gown details, HERE.