Designs on The Crown

For anyone, like me, addicted to the superb Netflix series, The Crown, the good news is that we will be able to get our next fix quite soon.

Series Three of this elegant and deliciously authentic-seeming chronicle of the British royal family will be on our screens on November 17.

In the hands of writer Peter Morgan (The Queen, Frost/Nixon), director Stephen Daldry (Billy Elliot, The Hours) and producer Andy Harries (The Queen), the personal intrigues, controversial romances, political rivalries and other events of the period were all compellingly realised.

Now Olivia Colman takes the reins as Queen Elizabeth, with Tobias Menzies as Prince Philip. Helena Bonham-Carter will play a more mature Princess Margaret while Ben Daniels will take the role of the Princess’s husband, the Earl of Snowdon. One storyline so far ignored is the Jewish ancestry of Lord Snowdon, photographer husband of Princess Margaret.

“Tony Snowdon was very open about his Jewish ancestry and was the first to say that it was where much of his innovative talent and creativity came from,” says his biographer, Anne de Courcy. “His great-uncle was Alfred Messel, who designed the Berlin National Gallery and after whom two Berlin streets are named.

“Alfred’s brother, Ludwig Messel, settled in England and bought the famous Nymans estate. His granddaughter, Anne Messel, was Lord Snowdon’s mother.

A well-known society beauty, she had a superb eye for decor and could draw and embroider exquisitely,” says de Courcy. “Lord Snowdon’s uncle, Oliver Messel, was one of the most celebrated stage and film designers of the 20th century.”

In Snowdon: The Biography (Weidenfeld and Nicolson) Lord Snowdon told his biographer that his mother would “even draw the pudding for that night’s dinner to show the chef how she wished it to appear.”

Series Three will take up the Royal story in 1964. That was the moment when Bellville-Sassoon’s David Sassoon, the son of Iraqi Jewish immigrants, became the first — and arguably most prominent — of a coterie of Jewish designers and fashion advisers, who “dressed” most senior Royal women during the period covered in the next two series of The Crown as well as in the decades that followed.

When David Sassoon joined Belinda Bellville immediately after graduating in fashion-design from the Royal College of Art, Bellville was already a firm favourite of the Sloane Ranger set.

By 1970 when the company was renamed Bellville-Sassoon, the client list at its Knightsbridge atélier was a cross between Debrett’s and Hello! There were numerous celebrities, including Audrey Hepburn, Elizabeth Taylor and Ava Gardiner, as well as Princess Margaret, Princess Anne, Princess Alexandra and Princess Michael, along with the Duchess of Kent; Camilla Duchess of Cornwall (Sassoon designed the wedding gown Camilla wore at her first-wedding to Andrew Parker-Bowles), and several of the queen’s ladies-in-waiting.

A decade later, HRH Princess Diana would become a cherished client of the quietly-spoken Sassoon. From her engagement onwards, he made 70 outfits for her in all. These included her post-wedding “going away” outfit; ten outfits for her honeymoon and wedding trousseau and the pink daisy print dress she wore for Prince William’s christening.

Sassoon, now aged 85 and still mentoring young designers such as the talented Syrian, Nabil Nayal, recalls Diana’s style evolution: “When I first made dresses for her, she was 19 years old and liked to wear pretty and romantic dresses. But over the years, her taste changed and she became more glamorous and sophisticated.”

One important frock he did not make, however, was the wedding gown Diana wore for her marriage to the Prince of Wales in July 1981.

That honour fell to the young design duo, the Emanuels, one half of which — Elizabeth Emanuel neé Weiner (daughter of Sam and Betty Weiner, herself the daughter of Sidney Charkham of the famous tailoring family) — was Jewish.

When Lady Diana chose Elizabeth and her then husband, David, to make what was arguably the most famous wedding dress of the 20th century, the design duo were already running a flourishing couture salon in Brook Street, Mayfair, and Diana had already sampled the Emanuel “wow” effect with a strapless black gown that got flashbulbs popping when she wore it to attend a gala dinner a few months earlier.

As well as David Sassoon and Elizabeth Emanuel, other Jewish designers who regularly “dressed” senior royal ladies during the period of the next two series of The Crown, and in the subsequent decades, include Jacques Azagury, Murray Arbeid, Victor Edelstein and Roland Klein. Azagury recently told the JC that Diana: “was always interested in what everyone had to say. She would ask about my life, she would talk to the girls in the atelier and tell them she liked their nail varnish.”

If Princess Diana seemed particularly keen on Jewish designers, it was not, believes David Sassoon, because they were Jewish per se. “Diana liked people from a different background to hers —I don’t think being Jewish had anything to do with it,” he says firmly.

Lingerie doyenne June Kenton of Rigby & Peller, who was also very close to a number of Royal ladies, ten, disagrees. She believes the late Princess gravitated towards Jewish designers and fashion advisers because she appreciated their “warmth and empathy.”

Wizo member and one-time stalwart of Bromley Synagogue, Mrs Kenton is the former holder of the Royal Warrants for corsetry for the Queen and for the late Queen Mother. She also fitted many other notable royals for their bras and swimwear, including Princess Margaret and Princess Diana.

Mrs Kenton is, these days, exceedingly circumspect about commenting on the Royals. Her 2017 biography, Storm In A D Cup – an, um, titillating account of bra-fitting at Buckingham Palace, created its own storm and led to her being stripped of the Royal Warrant.

As Kenton is semi-retired and she and her late husband, Harold sold their lingerie business almost a decade ago, the practical impact of this loss is minimal but this corsetry-expert par excellence nevertheless describes it as “hurtful.”

“It hurt a lot. I felt very wounded.” She refuses to say more on the subject but one has the sense she was extremely fond of the Queen and felt bereft when the fitting sessions ended.

One story Mrs Kenton is happy to recount, is when she suggested to Princess Diana that she might like to see the glamorous new swimwear collection from Israeli brand, Gottex.

“Diana immediately agreed,” Mrs Kenton recalls. “This was 1996 or ‘97 and the Gottex founder Leah Gottleib was then quite elderly. But as soon as she heard about Princess Diana, she got on a plane and flew over from Israel specially,” Mrs Kenton remembers.

“Mrs Gottleib told me afterwards that it was the best thing that had ever happened to her. And, of course, in all the photographs and news footage of Princess Di aboard Dodi Fayed’s yacht in the Mediterranean on that last holiday before her death, she was constantly seen in Gottex swimwear.”

Another holder of a Royal Warrant back then was the Jewish founder of the Hershesons chain of salons, Daniel Hersheson. During the period covered in The Crown, he was co-owner of Neville-Daniel, the Knightsbridge hair salon responsible for her majesty’s coiffeur.

The final connection between Jews and royal fashion is admittedly tenuous. For most of the early years of her reign, the queen’s undisputed favourite designer was Norman Hartnell.

The gowns the British designer created for a young Elizabeth were exquisite. For an older monarch, they were less so… but she stayed loyal to Hartnell even when fashion commentators ridiculed and criticised her clothes.

A few iconic Hartnell outfits appear on The Crown and based on how the outfits look on camera, it is hard to understand why the queen’s choices were disparaged.However, the outfits in The Crown are copies and have been reconstructed with a thoroughly 21st century sensibility, meaning a softer cut and more fluid lines.

In addition, the outfits are worn by a tall actress (Olivia Colman is five foot nine inches while the queen is five foot four).

We are also seeing the outfits, through the prism of a revival in all things “mid-century,” including fashion. Thus they appear impossibly glamorous rather than — as many of us remember them — dowdy and frumpy.

The Jewish connection came in 1990, when the House of Hartnell was bought by a consortium of predominantly Jewish business-men headed by former Moss Bros boss Manny Silverman.

Shortly after the purchase, the diminutive Silverman flanked by a pair of couture-clad Amazons was the cover picture on a JC Magazine, above the words “The man who put the heart back into Hartnell.”  