Of Course it was Catherine Walker!

I just wanted to thank the lady in my shop today who was able to tell me who it was that did the brilliant dress that Lady Helen Taylor wore. That has been on my mind with all the talk of the Royal Wedding and for the life of me all I could remember anything but the dress! Thank you, I was very impressed with your knowledge of the fashion world. I do hope by chance that you go online and read my blog as I really wish I could have thanked you more.
For any of you who are crazy enough to read my blog let me tell you more.This lady called to find out more about my bridesmaids for a friend of hers and in the course of us chatting I realised I was talking to a very keen fashion knowledgable lady.
Yes she not only knew that it was Catherine Walker who was the fashion couturier for Princess Diana and Lady Helen but she also had had an outfit made by her. To my delight and amazement the Lady went home and got the outfit and brought it back to show me. Girls you know I get excited over anything to do with a needle and thread but this was a Catherine Walker dress and jacket and I had my hands on it. The beautiful embroidery was cleverly angled over the dress just to be so flattering to the female shape. The very buttonholes were hand sewn and every inside seam hand sewn to perfection. " If only!!"

However the story of Catherine Walker is a bit sad. She was French and met her husband while she was working in London at the French Embassy. He was a solicitor who sadly died in an accident at the age of 32yrs. Catherine was left alone with her two daughters, worried about purpose as well as money.
She studied fashion at night school and started sewing for her daughters, simple sailor dresses. She built up a clientelle in Chelsea near her daughters school and studied more and eventually set up the Chelsea Design Company. So there is inspiration for us all.
Old- fashioned Parisian couture had had its influence on her. She wanted to work directly with her clients, rather than showing a catwalk collection as a loss leader for a wholesale line. Paris had abandoned this mode of business by the 70's, but Catherine attracted customers who appreciated couture integrity. What was discussed between couturier and client was never repeated outside workrooms, so both could be honest about hiding defects and revealing assets.
By 1981, she had enough clients for viability, and then Princess Diana chose her with intuitve trust. She made her over 1000 dresses, not the low, short,tight, black "revenge dress". Such was their closeness that Diana's butler, Paul Burrell, phoned Catherine after the princess's death to ask how she should be dressed in her coffin. So she did her a black dress in which Diana went to her Althorp grave.
To finish this sad story Catherine Walker herself faced death, but referred to her surgery for breast cancer in 1995 as a "hiccup" that must not interrupt business. She sponsored the charity Breast Cancer Haven but sadly her cancer returned. When certain of imminent death, she trained a design team to succeed her and planned her company portfolio up to 2012. She remarried and lived to see a grandchild wear a Catherine Walker, but finally on 23 September 2010 she lost her fight with cancer.