It was Betty who told me of the royal ladies’ visit while the gown was being made, and of the difficulty she and her friends had with their curtseys. Although she was a seamstress and not an embroiderer, the shape of her life there was the same: early mornings, focused work, short breaks brimming with tea and conversation, the excitement of the occasional famous visitor. There, only inches away, were the practice buttonholes she had made, as well as an extra button, a strip of the surprisingly delicate horsehair buckram that lined the gown’s billowing skirts and wispy samples of the silk tulle used for the embroidered train.įrom Betty I got a sense of what it was like to work at Hartnell. We pored over its pages together, and the sight of her treasures was enough to make my heart race. Just like that.”īetty had the foresight to save scraps of fabric and trimmings from the workroom that would otherwise have been thrown out, and she later preserved them in a scrapbook. “Would you believe I wasn’t? Miss Halliday told everyone to be quiet while I worked, and I did some practice buttonholes on a scrap of material, and then I just made them. “Weren’t you nervous?” I asked her, but she laughed and shook her head. Hartnell selected Miss Halliday, the senior seamstress under whose supervision Betty worked, to make Princess Elizabeth’s wedding dress in the autumn of 1947.Īlthough Betty had never made buttonholes before, she was given the task of sewing 22 of them up the back of the gown - and as the bodice had already been embroidered and the wedding was only weeks away, any error on her part would have been a disaster. Before long she was working on beautiful gowns for film stars and royals alike, which was good practice for when Mr. At the age of 14, she was taken on as an apprentice at Hartnell, her pay seven shillings and sixpence a week it seemed like a fortune to her at the time. Within minutes we’d settled ourselves at a big, round table in her sitting room and started talking - a conversation that would open a window into this otherwise hidden world behind the scenes at the royal wedding.īetty told me about her childhood in the east end of London, a happy time that was scarred by the horror of her father’s death in the Blitz. Betty’s response was to set down my gifts and give me a big hug. I was so nervous that my hands were shaking as I rang her doorbell, introduced myself and presented her with some flowers and a tin of tea from Fortnum and Mason. The next morning, after connecting with Betty over the phone and receiving an invitation to visit, I traveled to the eastern suburbs of London. If you don't get the confirmation within 10 minutes, please check your spam folder. Click the link to confirm your subscription and begin receiving our newsletters. The women who worked for Hartnell were artists, each of them, and in that moment of realization I felt it - for the first time I felt a connection to those anonymous faces and voices and talented hands.įor your security, we've sent a confirmation email to the address you entered. It was exhausting work, but it was also fascinating and artistically challenging. To that end I went to Hand and Lock, a renowned hand embroidery studio in London, and with the help of their master embroiderers I reproduced a single flower from the princess’s gown.
![betty betty](http://i.embpersons.com/cute/org/6e5b548c3650.jpg)
I hadn’t been able to interview anyone who had worked on the gown, nor even anyone who had worked for Norman Hartnell in the 1940s or 1950s, and so with that door closed (or so I imagined), I resolved to learn for myself how the gown’s embroidery had been created. I met her in February 2017, towards the end of a research trip to England. As part of my research for my forthcoming novel The Gown, I searched for them for months, running into one dead end after another, before chance led me to one remarkable woman who had worked on the gown. No one thought to interview the embroiderers at the time, and little trace of them survives in the thousands of stories that appeared in newspapers and magazines around the world.
BETTY'S ORIGINAL EMBROIDERY FULL
What set it apart were the exquisite pearl- and diamanté-encrusted star flowers, roses, jasmine blossoms and ears of wheat embroidered on the gown’s bodice, full skirts and ethereal silk tulle train.īut who had created those enchanting details? The women who stitched the embroidery labored anonymously.
![betty betty](http://i.embpersons.com/cute/org/64162cebf10d.jpg)
Its silhouette, with a sweetheart neckline and long, fitted sleeves, was conventional enough.
![betty betty](https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0014/6879/2947/products/Redwork_for_Kids_2_1024x1024@2x.jpg)
In the Hartnell workrooms, tucked away at the back of his lavish Mayfair premises, his embroiderers set to work - and the gown they created, together with its magnificent 15-foot train, was indeed the stuff of dreams.