Norman Hartnell: The cross dressing secrets of the Queen’s ‘Miss Kitty’

BOOK OF THE WEEK

NORMAN HARTNELL: THE BIOGRAPHY  

by Michael Pick (Zuleika £35, 528pp)

The first chapter of this book is called ‘Crown & Sceptre’. As it’s the biography of Sir Norman Hartnell, the great dressmaker to three Queens (Mary and two Elizabeths), I thought ‘crown and sceptre’ must refer to the coronation items worn and held in Westminster Abbey.

Actually, the Crown & Sceptre turned out to be the name of the pub in Streatham where Norman was born and grew up, the son of a successful publican. 

Young ‘Normie’ found the wallpaper in his nursery so hideous (brown cows) that he designed his own.

He soon graduated to doodling pictures of well-dressed actresses in his Latin textbook, and then to designing costumes for the Cambridge Footlights while he was an undergraduate at Magdalene.

Sir Norman Hartnell (centre with Princess Margaret and Queen Mother) worked as a dressmaker to Queen Mary, Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother and Queen Elizabeth II

Hartnell always kept quiet about his lowly Streatham origins. There was going to be a This Is Your Life programme about him in 1960, but it was withdrawn at the last minute when Norman found out he was to be the subject.

A startling incident described in the prologue makes you see why he might have preferred not to talk about his private life on television.

Late one evening in 1948, the prim-and-proper bookkeeper at Norman Hartnell Ltd, Miss Ivy Godley, returned to the offices in Mayfair, because she thought she’d left the safe unlocked.

She was surprised to find the door ajar, and even more surprised to find, sitting near the telephonist’s table, a figure resplendent in a sparkling evening dress with embroidered crinoline skirt. The figure turned out to be Norman Hartnell.

So that explained the mysterious client, the ‘woman from the Midlands’, who kept ordering dresses with unusual measurements. 

Hartnell was clearly expecting a visitor. Michael Pick later drops into the text that Norman was a fetishist: he kept a large collection of riding boots and uniform, and liked to be transformed into ‘Miss Kitty’ and ‘violated with considerable force’ by a male sexual partner.

Chacun à son goût, and all that, but there would have been a terrible scandal if any of this had got out. 

Hartnell would surely have lost the patronage of the three Queens, along with the strings of old duchesses who came to his salon to be fitted and sat there chatting all afternoon, as they had nothing better to do. 

The fashion designer (pictured in his studio) would design costumes for the Cambridge Footlights while he was an undergraduate at Magdalene before finding fame in the royal household

The fashion designer (pictured in his studio) would design costumes for the Cambridge Footlights while he was an undergraduate at Magdalene before finding fame in the royal household

The real problem, as Michael Pick shows us, was that Hartnell — an innately shy, weak, trusting, fastidious, naive man who did not have a good business brain — allowed himself, for three decades from the 1940s to the 1970s, to be in thrall to his lover, a married ex-soldier called George Mitchison, who clearly had a sexual hold over him, and whom Norman promoted to general manager of the firm.

Mitchison was rampantly extravagant, and an incompetent blunderer. Loyal members of staff gradually resigned, as the firm sank more and more deeply into debt. But Norman was deaf to all unpalatable advice, such as that Mitchison should be fired.

‘It was as though he had an urge to self-destruct,’ Pick writes. Hartnell’s pre-war lover, Commander John Pleydell, had been a much better manager of the firm, full of astute business vision, but he left when their relationship ended, and George took his place.

The fashion expert went on to design Queen Elizabeth II's wedding dress (pictured) and her coronation dress

The fashion expert went on to design Queen Elizabeth II’s wedding dress (pictured) and her coronation dress

So, alongside the glorious English haute-couture glamour of this story — Hartnell’s astonishing rise from creating uniforms for Selfridges lift girls in the early 1920s to his career pinnacle of designing the Queen’s coronation dress in 1953 — there’s a parallel story of Hartnell the small, chain-smoking, insecure man with dyed brown hair, who made bad decision after bad decision, until his lavish lifestyle became a mere veneer, masking insolvency.

In 1963 he finally admitted: ‘I’m not a millionaire. I just live like one.’ Shortly after that, he ceased even to live like one: the bank forced him to sell his beloved house, Lovel Dene near Windsor, and ‘it felt as if his whole life had been torn to shreds’.

But what a cocoon of exquisite elegance Hartnell’s world was in its heyday — when daughters still dressed like their mothers, so there was a constant stream of clients, both young and old, needing gowns for the Season.

At the sumptuous Hartnell premises in Mayfair, embroiderers, seamstresses and fitters worked away, translating Hartnell’s fairytale drawings into reality.

His genius lay not just in his artistic vision but also in his ability to make women feel marvellous about themselves. ‘Norman never made a client feel anything but a fairytale princess,’ recalled theatre designer Oliver Messel’s sister Anne.

The Royal family knew they could trust him to be discreet and to create dresses of luminous beauty perfect for the occasion.

The Queen Mother was a lifelong loyal patron: ‘She’s a dear girl,’ he said of her. Princess Margaret (whose wedding dress he designed) used to sneak in through the back entrance.

During his career, Norman, who once created uniforms for Selfridges lift girls,  designed a range of stylish outfits for women

During his career, Norman, who once created uniforms for Selfridges lift girls,  designed a range of stylish outfits for women

Model Sally Jamieson wearing a full length evening dress embroidered with diamonds designed by Norman Hartnell in 1964

English actress Elsie Randolph donning a flowing dress  designed by Norman Hartnell

Among his famous clients were model Sally Jamieson (left), who wore a gold dress designed by Norman Hartnell in 1964 (left) and  English actress Elsie Randolph (right) who wore another of Norman’s creations in 1924

The Duchess of Kent used to borrow gowns free of charge and return them worse for wear.

‘Adapt or die’ is the brutal truism of business; and Hartnell never did adapt enough to keep abreast of the changing world.

Christian Dior admitted to Hartnell that ‘it was the crinolines you designed for the Queen to wear in Paris in 1939 which inspired my evening dresses and the New Look’, but Dior’s meteoric post-war rise to fame eclipsed Hartnell. 

Those royal commissions didn’t bring in enough income to keep the firm solvent, and there was an increasing sense that Hartnell was becoming a ‘has-been’.

Cecil Beaton was withering about Hartnell’s old-fashioned style.

In his book Michael Pick explains there is parallel story of Hartnell- the small, chain-smoking, insecure man with dyed brown hair, who made bad decision after bad decision

In his book Michael Pick explains there is parallel story of Hartnell- the small, chain-smoking, insecure man with dyed brown hair, who made bad decision after bad decision

Seeing the Queen Mother dressed in a ‘hideous turquoise-green telephone cover’, as he described it, he wrote: ‘How could he?’

But Hartnell was obliged keep working, well into his final decade (he would die in 1979, aged 77), in order not to go bankrupt.

The strain gave him heart attacks, nervous breakdowns and gout. He made lots of forays into ready-to-wear clothes and scent, but every mass-production scheme seemed to end in failure. 

He also made terrible mistakes — such as cancelling a trip to the U.S. when invited to a prestigious fashion award: the perceived snub meant that he would never be able to break into the American market.

When the bailiffs were about to arrive to remove his furniture, Hartnell wrote a desperate letter to the Prime Minister Harold Wilson, begging for his help to rescue a great British name. 

Wilson passed the letter on to the Chancellor — and it seems to have done the trick, as the bailiffs didn’t turn up as expected.

All this struggle and disaster because Hartnell (as Pick puts it) ‘allowed his fetishistic fantasy life to become a powerful private need that lasted into old age’, and ‘trusted a man with whom he had only emotional ties’. Never a good idea in business.

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