Norman Hartnell: The Biography
Michael Pick
Sir Norman Hartnell, leading British fashion designer, best known for dressing three Queens, the ladies of the British upper classes but who also designed the uniforms for the first Brighton Police ladies is explored here in comprehensive detail by Michael Pick. He had world-wide fame and influence, twice changing the silhouette of women’s fashions when such things were the essence of high fashion. Biographer Pick working from a treasure trove of Hartnell’s own previously unexplored archive takes us behind the facade of a glittering public existence.
Hartnell suffered privately from his hidden gay lifestyle, the pressures and difficulties eventually led to a mixture of personal misjudgements and remarkable management crises that often plunged his House to the brink of financial ruin. Pick has that good biographers eye, laying out detail, highlighting connections, pointing out contradictions and bring small moments to our attention which then spin out across Hartnells’ life bringing change, opportunity and ruin. From his working class roots in a south London Pub where as a child he redesigns the hideous brown cow wallpaper in his bedroom, to his 30 year business partnership with George Mitchison who seems to have had some hold over Hartnell, their relationship reads as co-dependent as Mitchison exploits and mismanages Hartnells’ success, we see a warts and all examination rising to his pinnacle of designing the Queen’s coronation dress.
The personal exploration of Hartnell exposed wearing his own beautifully embroidered clothes, and meeting violently rough trade for sex, while dressed as ‘Miss Kitty’ certainly gives real insight into this shy, fastidious highly talented man and the tensions between his private life and his highly public socialite life. Pick explores this with honest sensitivity although decided that Hartnells’ fetishistic private life which lasted almost to his death, and bad choices in the men he trusted, was the root cause of his ultimate business failure.
Hard Cover £35
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