The following content is quoted from:https://www.vogue.com/article/inside-the-world-of-norman-hartnell
Few couturiers are as closely associated with the British royal family as 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 watercolor 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 Min 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 1920s, Hartnell designed his signature embellished pieces for the well-heeled friends he had met at university, establishing himself as a favorite 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.
The Queen Mother, also in attendance at the ceremony, admired Lady Alice’s dress so much that she became a loyal client of Hartnell’s for the remainder of his life. After she commissioned him to design her entire wardrobe for her North American and Canadian tour in 1939, Hartnell achieved international as well as domestic fame. Many years later, in 1977, the Queen Mother made Hartnell the first fashion designer ever to be named a Knight of the Royal Victorian Order.
Of course, no one is more closely associated with Hartnell than Queen Elizabeth II herself. As a Princess, she famously had Hartnell design her wedding gown for her marriage to the Duke of Edinburgh in 1947. Inspired by Botticelli’s Primavera, the finished look was embroidered with garlands of flowers in silver thread along with delicate crystals and more than 10,000 seed pearls imported from the United States.
Even more momentous for Hartnell? Being asked to produce Her Majesty’s coronation dress. “One October afternoon in 1952, Her Majesty the Queen desired me to make for her the dress to be worn at her Coronation,” Hartnell later wrote in his autobiography, Silver and Gold. “I can scarcely remember what I murmured in reply. In simple conversational tones the Queen went on to express her wishes. Her Majesty required that the dress should conform in line to that of her wedding dress and that the material should be white satin.”
In the end, Hartnell created nine versions of the dress, with the Queen ultimately settling on a design featuring floral emblems for every country then under her dominion. “After gathering all the factual material I could, I then retired to the seclusion of Windsor Forest and there spent many days making trial sketches,” Hartnell reflected decades on from the event. “My mind was teeming with heraldic and floral ideas. I thought of lilies, roses, marguerites, and golden corn; I thought of altar cloths and sacred vestments; I thought of the sky, the earth, the sun, the moon, the stars, and everything heavenly that might be embroidered upon a dress destined to be historic.”
And historic it was.
