News

Recreating the royal dress

Published 30 May 2012

A University of Brighton student has helped recreate the Queen's Coronation dress for a Diamond Jubilee window display at Harrods.

Dress historian Jane Hattrick discovered the Queen's couturier Norman Hartnell's personal archive in 2005 and researched the dress as part of her Masters dissertation and her PhD research.

Information she uncovered into original embroidery for the dress motifs, patterns and embroidery designs pricked out, were used by Angels the Costumiers to make the dress for the Harrods' display in Knightsbridge.

Jane is scheduled to appear tomorrow (31 May) at 9pm in a BBC 4 TV documentary, The Queen's Coronation, and will be speaking at Kensington Palace's 'Modern Monarchy' conference on 8 June. She will be in Paris on 15 June at the Institut d'histoire de temps, with University of Brighton Professor Lou Taylor and the university's Dress History Collective, and in July she will be 'Introducing the Designer, Sir Norman Hartnell', at the V&A Museum Summer School.

Jane Hattrick's recreation of The Coronation Dress in the window of Harrods

Jane said: "I have been Lou's student since 1992 and have done a BA, Masters and a PhD with her in the twenty years since then. My PhD thesis unpacks the identity of Sir Norman Hartnell through an analysis of what is left of his personal effects, his collections of decorative art objects, original sketched designs and photographs and surviving garments.

"I discovered Hartnell's archive in 2005 in the course of research for my undergraduate dissertation on the couture fashion-designed dresses by Hartnell for the variety and radio stars Elsie and Doris Waters. This vast collection of material, containing everything from his baby photographs to his death certificate, and hundreds of sketched dress designs and correspondence, became the research source for my Masters dissertation in 2006.

"Fully funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, my PhD has continued this research into the life and work of Britain's most celebrated and prolific couture fashion and royal dress designer, under the supervision of Lou Taylor, professor of dress history.

"As a mature student, a single parent with two small children, coming late to academic study, I have had unfailing support from my tutors including Jill Seddon, head of course, Louise Purbrick and Lou Taylor (History of Design and Material Culture, MA, and my PhD supervisors).

"My time at the university's School of Humanities has been life changing."