Beryl Hartland, 99; Telegraph's fashion artist
Hyfler/Rosner
(Filed: 28/06/2006)
http://www.artistpartners.com/assets/history/beryl_hartland.jpg
Beryl Hartland, who has died aged 99, was The Daily
Telegraph's fashion artist for more than 45 years.
At first she produced elegant drawings, portraying
women of assured elegance in postwar innovations such as the
little black dress or the cocoon-wrap coat, to accompany the
words of others. She was excellent at capturing the spirit
of designers and the mood of their shows in Paris or Milan.
She started to write at around the time of the
Coronation, and took a close interest in the young Queen's
wardrobe.
Before a royal tour began Beryl Hartland would provide
a sketch and description of the Queen's outfits, such as
Norman Hartnell's white moire sheath dress to be worn at the
opera in Auckland, the gown for opening the Australian
Parliament, or more casual wear for walking around Ottawa.
While never following the Queen, Beryl Hartland liked to
visit cities on the royal itinerary beforehand, as when she
went to Swat, in Pakistan, where she discussed the dust
problem with local officials, talked to the Wali (the
hereditary ruler) and met a woman from Somerset who ran the
local hotel.
Beryl Hartland also wrote about wedding dresses and
fashions in the provinces, and previewed the 13 dresses the
actress Elisabeth Larner was to wear as Queen Guinevere at
the opening of Camelot.
She touched on the advantages of holding parties in
country houses instead of London hotels and described the
Christmas family rituals of the young politician John
Profumo.
While never very happy about the growing informality
in social life and fashion, she gave her approval to
anything that was stylish.
The daughter of an Irish nurseryman, Beryl Mavoureen
Goldby Hartland was born at Creswick, Victoria, on September
15 1906; she had two older brothers who were killed at
Gallipoli. She went to Tintern Grammar School, and started
work as an illustrator with the Sydney Daily Telegraph.
After a trip to Europe, she returned to Australia, where she
married Geoffrey Waters, an agent who was killed while
serving with the RAAF during the Second World War.
In 1946 she sailed for Britain, meeting en voyage her
second husband, Gordon Reid, a fashion photographers' agent.
A trip to the shows in Paris earned a series of
rebuffs, but on settling in London she began working as an
illustrator for Jaeger, Harrods, Selfridges and Liberty
before eventually being put on a retainer by The Daily
Telegraph.
Sharp-tongued and of notably unconventional
appearance, Beryl Hartland was a small, impish-looking woman
who reminded some of Coco Chanel or Colette; she had a
marked Australian accent and red hair, and sported black
clothes set off by a range of pins, earrings and scarves.
On retiring in her early eighties, she went to stay
with her cousin Arthur Boyd, the leading Australian painter,
who helped her to take up non-commercial art. She continued
to live in her elegant London flat looking over Eaton
Square, and took in Japanese students as lodgers.
Beryl Hartland went on her last holiday, to Egypt, in
her mid-nineties, and had her hair hennaed in hospital
shortly before her death on May 14.