info sought on Donald Campbell - couturier

Pinkcoke

Pinkcoke

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Do you know anything about him? So far I have found that Diana wore one of his dresses in 1983 and Stewart Parvin ( the Queen's current couturier) trained under him until 1995. Is his business still active? I don't know if it's just me but there seems to be a distinct lack of information available - I'm sure this is partly because most searches are flooded with pages about Donald Campbell the 1960's driver, which is not helpful!
 
I have two books just on Diana's fashion etc., he's mentioned in both, but there isn't any more info about him. The clothes by she wore that there are photos of are the white and blue outfit she wore to board the Britannia on the honeymoon, the red and green suit she wore on her first visit to Wales, as well as a a lilac evening gown of which there aren't any good photos. All in the very early years - 81 to 83.

Karin
 
Thanks for replying Karin, I'm surprised nobody else has heard of him, he sounds very well regarded.

I don't know the specific date but my evening dress is 1980's and such nice quality I wondered if it was 50's/60's (until I read up on the label) It is a full length dress in black velvet with a v-neck shawl collar and 3/4 sleeves. It has a wide waistband and watteaux train in taffetta with velour polkdots, big bum bow, 60's style velvet covered buttons down the back and the contrast fabric extends up to the shoulders, giving a tuxedo look to the back.
The label is very sparse with Donald Campbell in black capitals on white with 'Made in England' and 'Dry Clean only' down each side which I thought looked older than 80's but there are too many 80's features in the design to ignore.
 
I did a bit of sleuthing and found a few snippets.

He's originally Canadian, from Toronto. This Telegraph article from 1981 around the time he first started working for Diana has some good info. He came to Britain in the mid 1950s and worked for John Cavanagh, another royal couturier. There's a couple of articles in Canadian papers about his early career here

He has a knightsbridge shop at 8 William Street London SW1X 9HL

Other designers who've worked for him include Thomas von Nordheim and Don O'Neill

There are a number of other references to Diana wearing him, and he started designing for her during her engagement. Search ["Donald Campbell" Princess Diana]

The lilac dress was included in an exhibition of Diana's clothes in 2008 at Kensington palace so it's pictured in the factsheet available on that page.
 
He also did these dresses for Diana

27-luglio-1983-Carlo-e-Diana-con-William-a-un-anno-d-eta_gal_portrait.jpg


161425967863654588_Kk1mG6SS_b.jpg
 
Thank you Ruth! That's wonderful and further than I got...
I'm not sure the neck is actually a shawl collar - the flat neckline just turns into a wide rectangular collar over the shoulder and this stands up stiff.
The contrast/colour is a bit off in these pictures to show detail, it is in fact all black.

frontcropped.jpg
side2.jpg
backcropped.jpg
label.jpg
 
Wow - this really is a great dress! Gorgeous! I love how the collar stands away from the neck - very elegant! I wouldn't know what to call this kind of neckline though.

@Ruth, that is interesting. According to one of my books, the green dress was by someonelse whom she frequented a lot at the time. The pink dress doesn't get a mention at all. Personally, I always considered this one of her worst... ';)

Karin
 
Ah ok, I'm not certain of either of those dresses, that was just from googling. Your book is probably more accurate. Getty images say both are by Donald Campbell.

http://www.gettyimages.com.au/detai...ds-of-government-house-in-news-photo/73424901
http://www.gettyimages.co.uk/detail...erth-australia-march-1983-news-photo/73424987

However the pink dress and hat is said to be 'dress by Donald Campbell and hat by John Boyd', and this picture of a different, green dress and white hat also says 'dress by Donald Campbell and hat by John Boyd' - seems unlikely that both are!

http://www.gettyimages.co.uk/detail...e-eden-park-stadium-on-her-news-photo/2775939

There's another reference to the pink dress being Donald Campbell here - but we all know how inaccuracies propagate around the net.

Agree that neither of them are so great!
 
Great sleuthing Ruth! Most of Diana's hats were by John Boyd in the early years... Those in the photos are pretty typical, so that may well be. I've never seen the third picture so I couldn't say. Who knows... the interesting thing also is, which no one else seems to have noticed is that the white wide collar doesn't seem to have been a part of the green dress, rather it was a separate blouse with that collar that she wore underneath the dress. Because the collar crops up again in another pic, with a pink dress, and there one can see that it must have been a separate blouse she wore under the dress. So maybe the dress was by one designer and the blouse by another. My books aren't any clearer about this. Both of them appeared after her death, and I think they relied on info from either the designers, other people that were close to her and probably press records. But even at the time they were written, that was already over 10 years in the past.

Karin
 
Thank you very much for that link Ruth, I've used google news before but some times you forget these things exist :rolleyes:
I've found several more articles from the first decade of his career that are quite insightful such as;
He doesn't want to be a top designer (1959) The best quote being John Cavanagh's: " Of all the trainees who have been through this house, Campbell is the one with a future" - how true!
Couture expands Horizons (1966)

I have attempted to compose a Bio for the label resource from all this HERE, as I think his case is definetly worth an entry. Let me know if you think anything is not quite right. The length of his training time with Cavanagh is a little ambiguous in reports.

Karin one of the newspaper reports gave a description of the first suit she purchased from Campbell (I included this in the Bio), and it included a matching blouse, so I would have thought the white blouse also came with one outfit and she reused it. (Perhaps it could be traced back to the first outfit it appears in?)
 
Hi, I realize this is an old post, if you would still like a bit of info re Donald Campbell, I could give you a bit more info. :)
 
PeaJay said:
Hi, I realize this is an old post, if you would still like a bit of info re Donald Campbell, I could give you a bit more info. :)
Click to expand...
Hi PeaJay,
Since I posted this one of our members managed to get in contact with Donald Campbell himself (I have no idea how they did that!) to aquire a brief history for our label resource here:
http://vintagefashionguild.org/label-resource/campbell-donald/
If you have anything to add to this by all means please share, we love to hear first hand accounts in particular.
 
Hi all I have acquired a Donald Campbell dress, it was donated along with other high end clothes to the home where I work to sell and use the money for the residents funds, as I am into fashion or designers am wondering where one would go to sell such a dress, any help would be much appreciated,
 
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