The late Queen's former dressmaker has revealed the monarch's mischievous sense of humour and a charity-shop secret, saying the Queen was "giddy" at Prince William's obsession with Marmite sandwiches.
Maureen Rose, who spent more than 30 years helping to create some of the Queen's most treasured outfits, has shared memories of life behind Palace doors, including hilarious moments involving a second-hand handbag and fittings conducted with a mouthful of pins.
A lifetime of royal commissions
The 89-year-old seamstress created scores of outfits for Britain's longest-reigning sovereign, including the embroidered cream and gold coat worn when she opened Parliament following Tony Blair's election landslide in May 1997. She also made a white and silver embroidered state dress worn by the Queen during her Golden Jubilee in 2002.
Now Maureen is putting her own collection of clothes and dolls under the hammer and has shared memories of the woman she describes as one of the "warmest and funniest" people she ever met.
'One of the warmest and funniest people'
She said: "It makes me cross when the Queen is portrayed as austere because she was one of the warmest and funniest people I ever met. Of all my customers over the years, she was the very best. She was so easy to work with and down to earth and always thanked you for your work."
Maureen always felt honoured that the Queen called her by her first name, which was a rarity. At just 5ft 1in, she was three inches shorter than the monarch and remembers the Queen looking down at her during fittings, sometimes while Maureen had a mouthful of pins. She said: "She would joke 'Be careful you don't swallow them (the pins)."
A charity shop find and family interruptions
One of the funniest moments came after Maureen went hunting for a handbag she could cover in material to accompany one of the Queen's evening dresses. She found exactly what she needed in a charity shop and took it back to the Palace. Maureen said: "I saw it and realised it would work, so I covered it in material to match the gold dress. When I told the Queen where it had come from, she just laughed and said: 'Well at least I am doing my bit!'"
Fittings were also regularly interrupted by impromptu visits from the King, then Prince Charles, and Princess Anne. Maureen recalled: "They were every bit as warm with each other as any other family." She also remembers the Queen returning "giddy" from a telephone conversation with her grandson William, who had requested Marmite sandwiches for tea. And when Maureen herself became a grandmother, the Queen was quick to congratulate her. She said: "She told me it was really the most wonderful thing."
Attention to detail and a route into royal service
Maureen also revealed the extraordinary attention to detail that went into every royal outfit. After each fitting, the Queen would practise sitting down, walk up and down and study herself from every angle using three mirrors. She would then take a magnet on a string and use it to pick up any stray pins in case one of her beloved corgis stood on them.
Maureen's route into royal dressmaking began after she started out making underwear for wealthy women when she began her fashion career in the 1950s. An evening gown she had created was then spotted at a London nightclub by legendary courtier Norman Hartnell. He was so impressed that he resolved to discover who had made it.
"I thought it was a prank when I discovered he was trying to track me down. I couldn't believe it," Maureen said. Hartnell offered her a job, which she accepted on the condition she could continue to freelance. She worked for him for nine years until his death in 1979.
But it was while working for another designer, Hartnell's protégé Ian Thomas, that Maureen was first summoned to Buckingham Palace. She admits she was "petrified", but said the Queen immediately put her at ease with the words: "How very nice of you to come and give me your time."
Her first royal commission was to make and fit four long evening skirts and blouses for the Queen using fabrics gifted by the King of Thailand. When Thomas died in 1993, Maureen received a call at her home in the New Forest from the Palace. She said: "The Queen asked me to continue making her clothes, but I was not working with a designer at that time." She decided that having worked together so long, they would see how they got on. After some time she said: 'Well, we seem to be managing quite well with our inventions', so they carried on.
When Maureen retired in 2003, Her Majesty sent her a photograph showing herself alongside European heads at Windsor Castle wearing a sumptuous ivory gown Maureen had made. After retiring from royal service, Maureen turned her talents to designing dresses for her immaculate doll collection.
Now her dolls, dresses and diamonds are expected to fetch hundreds of pounds when they go under the hammer. Hansons Auctioneers' head of fine dolls, Janet Rawnsley, said: "Maureen is an incredible seamstress and the clothes she made for some of her collection of dolls are every bit as intricate as her finest work reserved for the late Queen." Maureen's collection goes under the hammer at Bishton Hall in Stafford on October 20.
