When Belinda Bellville opened her dressmaking atelier in 1953, the year of Queen Elizabeth II ’s coronation, she intended that it should do red carpet business. Back then, such carpets were not display spaces for the entertainment industry, but traditional to the “season”, the annual programme of society events just reviving after the austerities of the second world war and the years following it. Debutantes walked the red carpet to the palace, where they were presented to the monarch; to the balls and cocktail parties where matches were made and engagements announced; and along the aisle of the wedding church.
Bellville, who has died aged 94, had been a debutante in 1947. She was brought up in a season-observing family, and came to realise that a market was emerging in custom-made glad rags for women for whom French couture was too demanding, of purse and person, and British salons not fashionable enough. Calling her label Bellville et Cie, to fund the venture Bellville sold her Citroën car, a wedding gift from her brother Jeremy, for £500 and went into partnership with the owner of a Knightsbridge shop to gain a sales outlet: she was allotted a space too small even to sketch in, and access to an outside loo.
Her first show was at the smart home of her grandmother, Gladys “Cuckoo” Leith, who as a society divorcee in the 1920s had set up a Mayfair boutique. Bellville’s sister Camilla and fellow debutantes served as models. View image in fullscreen The American .
