Obituary: Sir Hardy Amies

Obituary: Sir Hardy Amies

Sir Hardy Amies: Courtly couturier

Despite his fame as a fashion designer, Sir Hardy Amies was always irritated when people said he "dressed the Queen". He insisted she always knew what she wanted, and his House merely provided it.

Although he seemed the archetypal English gentleman, Edwin Hardy Amies did not come from aristocratic stock. His father was an architect-surveyor and his mother a saleswoman at a Court-dressmaking establishment in Bond Street.

The Queen has worn Hardy Amies creations since 1951

Born in 1909 in north London, young Amies watched in fascination as his mother sewed. But he was 25 before he entered the world of fashion.

Having failed to win an open scholarship to Cambridge University, Hardy Amies went abroad.

He worked in France and Germany before returning to England to train as a salesman in Birmingham.

Special Operations to Savile Row

Early in 1934, thanks to his mother's connections, Hardy Amies joined the London couturier, Lachasse, making such an impression that he was promoted to managing designer.

"I literally learned the business by talking to customers," he wrote later in his autobiography, Just So Far.

We suffered the mini-skirt

Sir Hardy Amies

When World War II intervened, Hardy Amies found himself in British Intelligence and later with the Special Operations Executive, organising sabotage and resistance in occupied countries.

As head of the Belgian Section, he supervised Operation Ratweek, the assassination of prominent Nazis and sympathisers.

In peacetime, he opened his own fashion establishment at the traditional home of English bespoke tailoring, Savile Row.

Royal patronage

In 1950, Hardy Amies introduced a line of ready-to-wear clothes.

His business was given its greatest boost in 1951 when the then Princess Elizabeth became a customer.

Hardy Amies in the 1950s

It was a business relationship that was to endure into the new millennium.

Amies was the first to get the Queen into shoulder-pads, but his designs never pandered to trends. "We suffered the mini-skirt," he said.

Over the years, his business changed dramatically, becoming a multi-million pound empire that lent its name to licences around the globe. His variety of goods included menswear, leather goods and sunglasses.

But personal clients still went to the House of Amies for British classic styles, and Sir Hardy eschewed the use of supermodels and catwalk theatrics.

Exclusive clientele

In 1999, he ended decades of discretion by branding the creations of the young British designers, John Galliano and Alexander McQueen, as "unwearable" and more appropriate to the Folies Bergere.

Amies' clothes were "English and elegant"

Sir Hardy, who spoke near-fluent French and German, also mastered the language of the English upper classes and encountered few problems with his clientele over half a century.

His team had a way of "losing" the rare difficult customer, by pitching prices too high. Generally, though, Sir Hardy said, "I don't think anyone would come to us unless they were well brought up."

Asked to suggest an epitaph for himself, Sir Hardy suggested, "He made a lot of women happy for 50 years."