Fancy Dress 

A passion for fancy dress is shared by each generation of the Messel family. A number of fancy dress outfits worn by Maud Messel and her daughter Anne, Countess of Rosse survive in the Messel Dress Collection. These outfits reflect the family's particular interest in oriental and historical subjects from the period 1750-1820.

Guests at fancy dress balls throughout the twentieth-century highlighted their social status by dressing as famous relatives. Maud and Anne used fancy dress to celebrate an ancestral link to Elizabeth Linley, the famed beauty and musician who scandalously eloped with the playwright and politician Richard Brinsley Sheridan in 1772.

Maud Messel

Maud was fascinated by the story of her distant ancestor. She and Leonard adopted the characters of Elizabeth Linley and Richard Brinsley Sheridan at high profile fancy dress balls, including the Chelsea Arts Club Ball in 1911.

The couple also hosted many fancy dress balls and children's parties at their homes. Their Arabian Nights Ball held at New Year in 1912 was particularly memorable, one guest wrote afterwards of the 'wonders and success' of the 'effect of colour, light and dresses'.  Kathleen Owens the gamekeeper's daughter recalled the 'ball with an eastern theme and the beautiful jewel colours of the dresses'.

 

Maud Messel dressed as Elizabeth Linley at the Chelsea Arts Club Ball 1911. ©The Messel Collection at Nymans Gardens, The National Trust.		Leonard Messel dressed as Richard Brinsley Sheridan at the Chelsea Arts Club Ball 1911. ©The Messel Collection at Nymans Gardens, The National Trust.

Maud made many of her own fancy dress costumes. A dress labelled 'Empire 1913' is preserved in the collection, along with a photograph of Maud wearing it dressed as Lady Hamilton.  Around the hem Maud has appliqued Graeco-Turkish embroidery, some of the tacking stitches remain in place.  Other unlabelled and dramatic garments survive in the collection, most likely made and worn by Maud as fancy dress.

Fancy dress 1913. ©Nicholas Sinclair 2004.		Maud Messel in fancy dress 1913. ©The Messel Collection at Nymans Gardens, The National Trust.

Anne, Countess of Rosse

Anne and her brother Oliver Messel attended many fashionable fancy dress balls and charity pageants in London during the 1920s and 1930s.  Anne attracted much attention wearing flamboyant costumes created by Oliver, who was making his name as a theatre and film costume designer. In 1929 British Vogue  described Anne as 'one of London's charming jeunes mariées, well known for her beauty, for the originality of her costume dresses, and not least because she is the sister of Oliver Messel, the stage artist.' At the Pageant of Great Lovers in May 1927, Anne, dressed as the mythological beauty Ariadne, was singled out by the Duke of Kent as 'the best looking girl in the room' - a great compliment considering the Hollywood siren Tallulah Bankhead, dressed as Cleopatra was also present.

Like Maud, Anne maximised her association with Elizabeth Linley. For the 1922 Devonshire House Ball, she wore the same dress that Maud had worn to the 1911 Chelsea Arts Ball.  To a charity matinée in 1931 Anne was accompanied by her 4-year-old daughter Susan, also in eighteenth-century dress. A similar cream silk eighteenth-century gown bought by Maud and Leonard Messel from the Bath antiques dealer Rosa Dyer in 1924 is preserved in Nymans House. It is likely that Anne or Maud wore this gown as fancy dress.

Anne Armstrong-Jones (later the Countess of Rosse) and Oliver Messel dressed as Bacchus and Ariadne at the Pageant of Great Lovers Through the Ages, 6 May 1927 ©The Messel Collection, Nymans Gardens, The National Trust.


Anne and Susan wearing eighteenth-century fancy dress, 1931. ©The Messel Collection, Nymans Gardens, The National Trust.

Back to top