Sir Hardy Amies (1909-2003)
Dressmaker to the Queen, and the man who redesigned the bowler hat, Hardy Amies was educated at Brentwood School in Essex. He must have liked it because, some years later, he redesigned its uniform.
Amies had a distinguished war record and insisted on cutting his own uniform in loden, rather than khaki: "so much chic-er, that green rather than beige, don't you agree?"
After hostilities had ceased, the designer opened Hardy Amies Couture, purveyor of clothes to dull aristocrats. Few people would argue his designs were breathtakingly imaginative, but Amies was an exacting judge and arbiter of taste. His preferred method of judging a couturier was to find his ten fattest customers and see what had been made for them.
Ghastly as the many of the Queen's outfits looked, Amies had the right philosophy: keep it simple. "What's the point," he would say, "of fucking up the cloth with a whole load of seams, huh?"
A fitting sentiment indeed.
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