Fashion and Fancy Dress
The Messel Family Dress Collection: 1865 – 2005
The Messel Family Personalities
Marion Herapath married Linley Sambourne, the famous Punch cartoonist, in 1874.
She managed the household at Stafford Terrace, Kensington (now Linley Sambourne
House, in the care of the Royal Borough of Kensington & Chelsea).
Maud Messel was famous for her picturesque, soft and romantic style, with its
characteristically English touch of fashionable eccentricity. Her dress collection
dates from 1895-1935 and reflects her choice of English couturiers. The exhibition
charts Maud Messel’s love for her family, her travels, her own embroidery
workshops in Sussex, her production of Shakespeare plays in her local village
and her fascination with fancy dress and collecting.
Her husband, Leonard Messel, a stockbroker, was a connoisseur collector and gardener,
who created the gardens at Nymans, West Sussex (bequeathed to the National Trust
in 1953). Both the Messel and Rosse families were renowned collectors and propagators
of Chinese plants.
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| Dress by Mascotte, c.1905, worn by Maud
Messel |
At fancy dress balls, and in photographs and paintings, Maud recreated herself
and her husband in the image of her famous ancestor Elizabeth Linley and her husband,
Richard Brinsley Sheridan. She kept the best of her mother’s clothing and
her own.
Anne Messel (later Anne Armstrong Jones and then Lady Rosse) was even more famous
than her mother for her elegance and sense of sophisticated couture style. Her
dress collection dates from 1924-1960. Her brother, Oliver Messel, was one of
the most successful interior, theatre and film designers of 1930-50s.
From 1924-1930, Anne wore highly fashionable art deco influenced clothes from
London and Paris. She became famous in London through Society fancy dress balls
in the 1925-39 period, dressed by Oliver Messel. From 1935, during Anne’s
marriage to the Earl of Rosse she wore London and Paris couture clothes by Molyneux,
Schiaparelli, Victor Steibel, and John Cavanagh and promoted the Irish designers,
Irene Gilbert and Sybil Connolly.
Michael, 6th Earl of Rosse (of Birr Castle, County Offaly), was one of the founders
of the Georgian Group. He was also a famous patron of the arts and gardener. Anne
herself founded the Victorian Society.
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| Anne Armstrong-Jones and Oliver Messel,
1932 |
As well as her own collection, Anne Rosse preserved her grandmother’s and
her mother’s clothing, photographs, letters and embroidery. She was famously
photographed by Bassano, Cecil Beaton and Dorothy Wilding during the 1930s - 1950s.
Anne’s son, Lord Snowdon, is a world famous photographer, his son, David
Linley, is a celebrated furniture designer and Lady Sarah Chatto, Lord Snowdon’s
daughter, is a talented painter.
Introduction
Background and Context
The Exhibition
The Curators
Press
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