Princess Diana’s fashion designer Belinda Bellville dies aged 94

Belinda Bellville, who has died aged 94, was a favoured designer of Princess Diana and dubbed the ‘top people’s darling’ by the press thanks to dressing the likes of Princess Margaret, Audrey Hepburn and Jackie Kennedy.

The designer, born in Leicestershire in 1930 to Anthony Seymour Bellville, a scion of Keen’s mustard dynasty, and Audrey (née Kidston), founded her fashion house Bellville et Cie (later Bellville Sassoon) in 1953.

To fund the business, Bellville sold her Citroën car, a wedding gift from her brother Jeremy, for £500 and went into partnership with a Knightsbridge shop owner to gain a sales outlet. This was the only capital the company would ever need.

Bellville recalled: ‘The space was so small, it had an outside loo and I used to visit the neighbouring pub to design and sketch the dresses,’ reported The Telegraph.

Soon, the designer was dressing high society and even once showed the late Queen the bridesmaid dress she had made for Princess Anne for the wedding of Lady Pamela Mountbatten to David Hicks in 1960. ‘It’s very nice,’ remarked Her late Majesty. ‘Will it wash?’

So popular was Bellville et Cie with British aristocracy that by the end of the decade, a survey by Tatler revealed that the couture house had created more society wedding dresses than any other had in over 30 years.

The attraction of a Bellville design didn’t show any signs of dampening in the next several decades and in February 1981, a 19-year-old Lady Diana Spencer visited Bellville Sassoon in Knightsbridge.

It was a few days before the official photoshoot that would announce her engagement to then Prince Charles, and she had been sent to the store, now also run by fashion designer David Sassoon, by her mother, Frances Shand Kydd, to pick an outfit, reported The Guardian.

But she walked out again after the vendeuse suggested she might be more at home at nearby Harrods, where Diana picked an off-the-rack blue blazer and skirt to wear.

However, thankfully for Bellville and Sassoon, Diana returned to the Belville Sassoon studio with her mother in the run-up to her wedding.

Sassoon told Channel 5 documentary, Secrets of the Royal Wardrobe, in 2019: ‘Her mother brought her into us to have a trousseau made.

‘She had previously come in and there was a disaster with the vendeuse. She chose about ten dresses and her mother paid for them. I was thrilled she asked us to design her going-away outfit although I was disappointed we didn’t do her wedding dress.’

Bellville Sassoon made more than 70 gowns for the late Princess of Wales over nearly two decades and has been credited with having discreetly steered Diana in the direction of fully fledged fashion icon.

But Bellville was known to value her customers’ privacy and dubbed Diana ‘Miss Buckingham’ in the appointments book, reported The Times.

The fashion designer – a former debutante herself – was also renowned for dressing debutantes – including Queen Camilla, whose coming-out dress was a Bellville design. 

She also boasted clients including Jackie Kennedy, Elizabeth Taylor, Joan Collins, Audrey Hepburn, Madonna, Jerry Hall, Helen Mirren and Ivana Trump.

Cath Kidston was Belinda’s cousin and recalled: ‘I used to go and stay with her and watch her go out to work. She was fun, creative and interested in everything. She was someone I could aspire to be like.’

Bellville, who during the Second World War would make outfits out of old curtains with her mother, was inspired by her grandmother Gladys ‘Cuckoo’ Leith, who ran a dress shop in Savile Row in the 1920s. 

But the fashion designer had no formal training, instead working as an assistant to a society photographer and trying her hand at fashion journalism before setting up her shop.

She eventually hired Sassoon after being impressed by his final show at the Royal College of Art and he became a partner in 1970. Bellville retired in 1982 but remained a consultant.

Sassoon previously recalled of his business partner: ‘[She] was forever correcting me. One day I mentioned Ascot and she told me very severely that As-cot, as I’d pronounced it, was a water heater. I can hear her now: “And we don’t say navy, David, it’s navy blue.”’

Bellville wed financier David Whately in 1952, who died in 2008. She is survived by three daughters.

Belinda Bellville was born on March 29, 1930. She died on May 5, 2024, aged 94