ThE WaNtEd FaShIoNs....

The official dressmaker to Queen Elizabeth II, Sir Norman Hartnell, has been honored with an English Heritage Blue Plaque, which has been unveiled on Bruton Street, where the great couturier lived and worked from 1935 until his death in 1979. He is famous for dressing Queen Elizabeth (the late Queen Mother) and Queen Elizabeth II. The divas of Twenties such as Marlene Dietrich, Elizabeth Taylor and Vivien Leigh also used his services.

In 1938 Hartnell was appointed dressmaker to the British Royal Family and designed gowns for overseas visits. Among his most famous commissions was recreating the whole wardrobe of Queen Elizabeth after her mother, the Countess of Strathmore, died just five days before her daughter’s official visit to France with King George VI . As the Royal mourning color is white, the designer had to re-do the Queen's whole wardrobe in white in just three weeks.

The first fashion designer, who received the knighthood, he also created the wedding dresses of both Queen Elizabeth II and Princess Margaret and in 1953 designed the Queen's historic coronation dress embroidered with pearls and crystals with the emblems of Great Britain and the Commonwealth..

Hartnell, who clothed three generations of Britain's aristocracy, also designed for the theatre and for 21 films.

According to British Vogue, the Plaque was unveiled by Kenneth Partridge, who designed the interior of Hartnell’s store on Bruton Street and Julie Harris, the Oscar-winning costume designer who had the luck to work with Hartnell.