Updated 1:21 p.m. ET April 10
LONDON — David Sassoon, who designed couture dresses for Princess Diana and other royals alongside his creative partner Belinda Bellville, has died at 92.
His death was confirmed to WWD by his longtime friend and fellow designer Zandra Rhodes.
Sassoon, a warm, charming man with a wry sense of humor, never let his starry client roster go to his head.
Unlike so many designers of today who entertain behind velvet ropes, and reluctantly speak to the press or — heaven forbid — the public, Sassoon remembered the days when fashion was just another trade, when the spotlight was on the client — rather than the talent — and when designers had to enter through the side door of the palace, just like all the other tradespeople.
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The mischievous, self-deprecating designer famous for his elegant, embellished cocktail dresses and evening gowns, created dresses for the British royal family and their aristocratic cousins for decades, and never forgot the details of his first royal commission.
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In 1960, he and his then creative partner Bellville were asked to make a long dress for then 10-year-old Princess Anne. She was going to to be a bridesmaid in the wedding of Lady Pamela Mountbatten to interior designer David Hicks. It turned out to be an unforgettable moment — for a variety of reasons.
“I went to Buckingham Palace — through the tradesman’s entrance,” Sassoon told WWD with a smile, in a 2008 interview.
Once inside Anne’s nursery — with its ink-stained carpet — Sassoon recalls trying to bow to her mother, Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother, and accidentally stumbling into one of the pet corgis’ water bowls.
“A liveried page appeared, wiped my shoes and the carpet, and left. This wasn’t exactly what I had planned for my first visit to the palace,” Sassoon said.
It was the first of several gaffes Sassoon would make in royal company as his career blossomed over the subsequent decades.
Sassoon, who made more than 70 outfits for Princess Diana, including her cantaloupe-colored going-away outfit on her wedding day, and her maternity wardrobe, also recalled the moment he almost changed the course of royal history.
During a fitting at Kensington Palace, Sassoon threw open the door of Diana’s sitting room — and knocked over three-year-old Prince William. “’Oh, my god, I’ve killed the future King of England,’” he recalled thinking.
In the end, the only damage was a bump on the royal forehead. (Sassoon recalled how he and his staff dubbed the young Lady Diana “Miss Buckingham” in order to keep paparazzo Richard Young, as well as Michael Roberts, then a stylist for Tatler, off her trail.)
“David was vital in shaping Diana’s image as a fairy-tale princess for the modern era, creating clothes which epitomized ‘80s maximalism. His work conformed just enough to the expectations of royal dress codes while nudging them in a slightly daring fresh direction,” said Bethan Holt, author of “The Queen: 70 Years of Majestic Style” and “The Duchess of Cambridge: A Decade of Modern Royal Style.”
“The pale blue chiffon ballgown which Diana famously wore on the night she fell asleep at the Victoria & Albert Museum is the perfect example of this — dreamily and delicately glamorous but the off-shoulder design adds edge,” she added.
Holt also said Sassoon was “part of an inner circle of London designers who shaped Diana into a global style icon and showed how British couturiers could compete with designers in the big fashion capitals.”
“He designed things that were fashionable, but didn’t go over the top. He did glamour without ever shouting about it. [Princess Diana] always looked perfectly dressed [in his designs],” Rhodes said in a phone interview.
In 2009, Sassoon recounted those stories — and many more — in “The Glamour of Bellville Sassoon” (Antique Collectors Club), a look back at his 50 years in fashion. The book was coauthored by Sinty Stemp — a longtime assistant to the British designer Jean Muir — with a foreword by Suzy Menkes.
Given the longevity of his business, Sassoon was something of a rarity in British fashion.
The heyday of the couture house was in the ‘60s and ‘70s, when Bellville Sassoon designs were lauded worldwide, and when Sassoon and Bellville were dressing royals like Princess Margaret, socialites including Camilla Shand — now Queen Camilla — and “It” girls Jean Shrimpton, Marisa Berenson and Penelope Tree.
The business continued to thrive for decades, moving into categories such as fragrance and eventually selling shares to a bigger investor. “This has always been a small, hands-on business, and we’ve run a tight ship. But if anyone does want to buy us out now, we’d be delighted,” Sassoon told WWD in 2008.
When Bellville retired in the early ‘80s, Sassoon joined with designer Lorcan Mullany and ran the business with him before retiring himself in 2012.
The designer, who was born and raised in England in an Iraqi Sephardic Jewish family, said he’s always tried to make clothes that women want to buy, as well as evolve with the times.
Rhodes remembers meeting the “just fabulous and totally unassuming, but with a very strong character” Sassoon in 1967.
“He commissioned me to do a design for his company — it was a sort of floral with scallops on it. The design led to a friendship that went on and on. He was my best friend that I talked to every day,” she said.
Rhodes told WWD in 2008 that “If he had been in Italy he would have been compared to Valentino.”
“His detailing is original and immaculate, and he knows exactly how far to go in dressing for the most elegant of occasions,” she added, referring to his Chinese-themed dresses for Lady Amanda Harlech and his painted coats of the early ‘70s.
“He is unassuming and shy and never blows his own trumpet. Sadly by being in the U.K., he has not had the publicity due to him. He is one of our best kept secrets,” Rhodes said.
Sassoon quit making couture in the early 2000s, and turned his attention to ready-to-wear. “No one has time for fittings — and the days of making whole wardrobes are over,” he said.
He put the focus on cocktail and evening dresses, and made-to-measure wedding gowns. The rtw label was known as Bellville Sassoon Lorcan Mullany, and was stocked at stores including Harrods, Saks Fifth Avenue and Neiman Marcus.
Well into his 70s Sassoon was designing for clients including Blaine Trump, the famed London divorce lawyer Fiona Shackleton, Shakira Caine and Kelly Brook. Trump, he told WWD, was his favorite.
“She’s not an Ivana — she’s a lady like Grace Kelly, a glamorous American girl who loves clothes and who looks great in them,” he said.
Princess Anne remained a longtime customer. In 2008, for the state banquet at Windsor Castle given in honor of French President Nicholas Sarkozy and his wife Carla Bruni Sarkozy, the princess wore Sassoon’s hand-embroidered Wedgwood blue jacket and matching skirt.
However, some things did change radically during Sassoon’s fashion career. He remembers returning to Buckingham Palace in the 1980s to dress Sarah Ferguson, the Duchess of York, and zooming through the front gates, rather than the side entrance.
Eleri Lynn, chief curator at the Historic Royal Palaces said that the designer “had designed for all the women of the royal family, proudly — apart from the late Queen Elizabeth, and made sure to keep a record of which client had ordered which dress, so that they would avoid clashes.”
Sassoon had a reputation for being a generous man. “He donated his archive of designs and press books for Diana to the Historic Royal Palaces, where it has been enjoyed by many visitors in exhibitions and by researchers in study appointments. Through his kindness and humor, he became a great friend to Historic Royal Palaces and the curators with whom he shared his archives and stories with, and will be greatly missed,” Lynn said.