page_title: Elizabeth Handley-Seymour
section_title: Theatre design
hierarchical_section_title: Elizabeth Handley-Seymour / Business / Theatre design
caption_attribution_description: Português: Príncipe Alberto, Duque de Iorque (futuro Jorge VI) e Isabel Bowes-Lyon em seu casamentoEnglish: Prince Albert, Duke of York (future George VI) and Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon at ther wedding. Prince Albert is wearing the full dress uniform of the Royal Air Force with the rank of group captain.
context_page_description: Elizabeth Handley-Seymour was a London-based fashion designer and court-dressmaker operating as Madame Handley-Seymour between 1910 and 1940. She is best known for creating the wedding dress worn by Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, the future Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother, for her marriage to the Duke of York in 1923; and later, Queen Elizabeth's coronation gown in 1937.
context_section_description: One of Handley-Seymour's first high-profile clients was the actress Mrs. Patrick Campbell, who commissioned Handley-Seymour to create gowns for her role as Eliza Doolittle in the 1914 premiere of George Bernard Shaw's play Pygmalion. Campbell exploited the dramatic potential of her clothing to draw attention, depending on Handley-Seymour to produce garments that would "transcend mere modishness." To reflect Eliza's development from poor flower-seller to refined society lady, a dress worn midway through, in Act III, combined a fashionable cut with a gaudy yellow taffeta fabric with a brash "Futurist" print of scarlet roses. The final costume worn in the play, a pale grey dress and jacket with a boldly patterned black lining, presented Eliza as having achieved both fashionable refinement and freedom of thought, and was acclaimed by both the fashion press and the theatre critics. This final costume was adapted from a Paul Poiret ensemble.
  Shaw later criticised Handley-Seymour's costumes, declaring the print dress "horrible" and the Poiret-inspired ensemble "dramatically nonsensical," although Kaplan and Stowell suggest that Campbell was taking inspiration from the Edwardian feminist who used refined and elegant attire to counteract accusations of being a "hammer-wielding suffragette." Through rewrites and revisions, Shaw would later attempt to diminish Campbell's contributions to his play and downplay the success of her Eliza dressed by Handley-Seymour. Alongside Campbell, other actresses costumed by Handley-Seymour between 1913 and 1938 included Irene Vanbrugh and Diana Wynyard.
caption: Wedding of the Duke of York (the future George VI) and Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, 1923
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