[12] Thanks to his Cambridge connections, Hartnell acquired a clientele of débutantes and their mothers, who desired fashionable and original designs for a busy social life centred on the London Season.

[13] Although expressing the spirit of the Bright Young Things and Flappers, his designs overlaid the harder silhouettes with a fluid romanticism in detail and construction.

Hartnell's success ensured international press coverage and a flourishing trade with those no longer content with 'safe' London clothes derived from Parisian designs.

Hartnell became popular with the younger stars of stage and screen, and went on to dress such leading ladies as Gladys Cooper, Elsie Randolph, Gertrude Lawrence (also a client of Edward Molyneux), Jessie Matthews, Merle Oberon, Evelyn Laye and Anna Neagle; even top French stars Alice Delysia and Mistinguett were said to be impressed by Hartnell's designs.

[citation needed] Alarmed by a lack of sales, his sister Phyllis insisted that Norman cease his pre-occupation eveningwear and instead focus on creating practical day clothes.

Hartnell successfully emulated his British predecessor and hero Charles Frederick Worth by taking his designs to the heart of world fashion.

By 1934, Hartnell's success had outgrown his premises, and he moved over the road to a large Mayfair town house already provided with floors of work-rooms at the rear to Bruton Mews.

The interiors of the large late 18th-century town house are now preserved as one of the finest examples of art-moderne pre-war commercial design in the UK.

At the same time Hartnell moved into the new building, he acquired a weekend retreat, Lovel Dene, a Queen Anne cottage in Windsor Forest, Berkshire.

The Duchess of York, then a client of Elizabeth Handley-Seymour, who had made her wedding dress in 1923, accompanied her daughters to the Hartnell salon to view the fittings and met the designer for the first time.

Hartnell's ability in adapting current fashion to a personal royal style began with designs with a slimmed-down fit for day and evening wear.

The new Queen was short, and her new clothes gave her height and distinction; public day-clothes usually consisted of a long or three-quarter length coat over a slim skirt, often embellished with fur trimmings or some detail around the neck.

Wallis Simpson, subsequently the Duchess of Windsor following her marriage to Edward VIII, was also a London Hartnell client, later patronizing Mainbocher, who made her wedding dress.

Royal mourning dictated black and shades of mauve, which meant that all the clothes utilising colour for the planned June visit had to be re-made; Hartnell's workrooms worked long hours to create a new wardrobe in white, which Hartnell remembered had a precedent in British royal mourning protocol, and was not unknown for a younger queen.

By 1939, largely due to Hartnell's success,[citation needed] London was known as an innovative fashion centre and was often visited first by American buyers before they travelled on to Paris.

Some French designers, such as Anglo-Irish Edward Molyneux and Elsa Schiaparelli, opened London houses, which had a glittering social life centred around the Court.

Whilst it was a triumph for Hartnell to have gained Queen Mary as a client, the four young wives of her four sons created fashion news.

Hartnell received her endorsement to design clothes for the government's Utility campaign, mass-produced by Berketex, with whom he entered a business relationship that continued into the 1950s.

Although worried that he was too old for the job at 46, Hartnell was commanded by the Queen to create the wedding dress of Princess Elizabeth in 1947 for her marriage to Prince Philip (later the Duke of Edinburgh).

Hartnell also created the going-away outfit and her trousseau, becoming her main designer to be augmented by Hardy Amies in the early 1950s[15] and appealing to whole new generation of clients.

In addition, Hartnell designed the accompanying dresses worn by the Queen's Maids of Honour and those of all major Royal ladies in attendance, creating the necessary theatrical tableaux in Westminster Abbey.

Victor Stiebel made the going-away outfit for the Princess and the whole wedding and departure of the couple from the Pool of London on HMY Britannia received worldwide newspaper and television publicity.

In common with all couture houses of the era, rising costs and changing tastes in women's clothing were a portent of the difficult times ahead.

Apart from designing two collections a year and maintaining his theatrical and film star links, he was adept at publicity, whether it was in creating a full evening dress of pound notes for a news-paper stunt, touring fashion shows at home and abroad or using the latest fabrics and man-made materials.

Memorable evening dresses were worn by the concert pianist Eileen Joyce and TV cookery star Fanny Cradock and typified his high profile as an innovative designer, although in his sixth decade - then considered to be a great age.

However, it was not enough to turn the tide of high-street youthful fashion and he even had to sell his country retreat Lovel Dene to finance the Bruton Street business.

A memorial service in London was led by the then Bishop of Southwark, Mervyn Stockwood, a friend, and was attended by many models and employees and clients, including one of his earliest from the 1920s, his lifelong supporter Barbara Cartland, and another from a time as the Deb of the Year in 1930, Margaret Whigham.

Guest collections were designed by Gina Fratini and Murray Arbeid and the building was completely renovated under the direction of Michael Pick who brought back to life its original Art Moderne splendours.

He considered himself a confirmed bachelor, and his close friends were almost never in the public eye, nor did he ever do anything to compromise his position and business as a leading designer to both ladies of the British royal family and his aristocratic or 'society' clients upon whom his success was founded.