ROYAL COURTS OF FASHION

Queen Elizabeth II’s dressmaker, Norman Hartnell, writes in his foreword: I have taken the Tudors as a reasonable starting-point. I have ended in 1919; for with the end of the First World War and the disappearance of most of the Royal Courts of Europe, the nature and origin of fashion changed abruptly I have tried to look back nostalgically on the old and vanished world; for whatever its failings, that lost world has left for us a legacy of exquisite taste and memorable elegance.”