Until the mid twentieth-century, most women were reasonably accomplished dressmakers. The Messel women were exceptionally so.

Marion Sambourne

Marion's diaries reveal that she made many of her daughter Maud's clothes, she even made her coming out dresses in 1893. Marion also sewed and embroidered decorative textiles for her home.

Maud Messel

Maud's habit of customising her fashionable, romantically styled, garments with swatches of embroidery, jewelled buckles and even a section from a man's eighteenth-century waistcoat was most unusual in the 1900s and 1910s. Onto her Mascotte dinner dress of c1906-08 Maud added a patch of jewelled appliqué work and matching tassels. This popular style of embroidery was described in the Ladies Field, but its addition on a couture dress was not a common practice. Maud may have altered the dress before giving it to her mother, in order to make the gift more personal. In 1925 Maud made Anne's wedding dress, which has medieval overtones and is embroidered with rose motifs, reflecting both women's love of historical styling and flowers. Maud also ran her own embroidery school at Nymans, her Sussex home.

Anne, Countess of Rosse

Anne's needle skills were perfected when she worked at Victoire, a London couture salon, prior to her marriage. Anne also personalised the dresses she wore. Examples in the Messel Dress Collection include a green afternoon dress from 1929 which is embellished with braid and diamanté, and an Irene Gilbert evening dress of c1960 which has been appliquéd with an embroidered carnation, echoing her mother Maud's techniques. From the late 1920s Anne made some of her brother Oliver Messel's designs for the London stage as well as some of her own fancy dress costumes and in the 1930s helped her friend, the couturier Charles James, complete some of his dresses. In 1950 Anne made her daughter Susan's wedding dress and, in 1953, made her a striking yellow dress with a camellia corsage to wear to a party at Buckingham Palace.

Anna, Lady Oxmantown

	Wedding dress designed and worn by Anna Lin Xiaojing 2004, CCE0278.17. ©Nicholas Sinclair 2004.

For her marriage to Lord Oxmantown in 2004, Anna Lin Xiaojing designed the embroidered red wedding dress she had made in China, where she has established her own fashion house.