Ada Nettleship

Adaline Cort Nettleship (née Hinton; 1856–1932) was a British dressmaker and costume designer known for working at the forefront of the Aesthetic dress style and the rational dress movement.

Biography

Adaline Cort Hinton was the daughter of surgeon James Hinton and Margaret (Haddon) Hinton. She married the British animal painter John Trivett Nettleship, with whom she had three children. Their oldest daughter, Ida, became an artist and the first wife of British painter Augustus John.[1]

Nettleship established herself as a dressmaker in London, expanding from an earlier specialization in embroidery.[2]:329 Notable clients included the soprano Marie Tempest, and the actors Ellen Terry, Winifred Emery, Sarah Bernhardt, and Mrs Patrick Campbell.[2]:329

In 1884, she made Constance Lloyd's wedding dress for her marriage to Oscar Wilde.[3] She made other dresses for Lloyd as well that helped to set the new Aestheticist fashion for looser, more flowing garments with theatrical touches such as lace, embroidery, or brocade.[3]

Ellen Terry as Lady Macbeth, by John Singer Sargent, 1889. Terry is wearing the Carr-Nettleship iridescent dress.

One of Nettleship's most well-known works is a theatrical costume made for Ellen Terry in 1888 when she was playing the role of Lady Macbeth.[1] Designed by Alice Comyns Carr and crocheted by Nettleship to simulate a soft chain mail, the dress was oversewn with more than 1000 beetle wings to create an iridescent effect.[4][5] The idea for this costume probably came from two earlier Nettleship designs: an 1886 dress and an 1887 hat for Constance Lloyd that were oversewn with iridescent green beetle wings.[3] The American artist John Singer Sargent painted Terry in the Carr-Nettleship dress in 1889.[1] The restored costume is on display in Terry's home, Smallhythe Place, near Tenterden in Kent.[4]

Nettleship collaborated with Carr to make a dress for a production of Henry VIII,[5] and she created a dress for the play Henry of Navarre that Terry complained was almost unbearably heavy due to the use of steel panniers and extensive oversewing with jewels.[6] She also costumed Terry as Cordelia in King Lear (1892), Guinevere in King Arthur (1895), and Imogen in Cymbeline (1896).[2]:330–31

Nettleship's adventurous designs in the Aesthetic dress style — especially those for Lloyd — were admired by the London avant-garde, and in 1883 her work was included in a landmark exhibition by the Rational Dress Society.[3] Among the items she presented was a "Ladies Walking Costume" that included trousers, a feature that allowed for radical shortening of the overskirt, thereby reducing the weight of the entire ensemble.[3] This was more than two decades before European women started wearing trousers in public. Nettleship's designs were generally regarded as too eccentric by the wider public and often subjected to ridicule in the press and in private letters.[3]

References
  1. Hill, Rosemary. "One’s Self-Washed Drawers". London Review of Books 39:13 (29 June 2017).
  2. Isaac, Veronica Tetley. "'Dressing the Part': Ellen Terry (1847-1928)". PhD dissertation, University of Brighton, 2016.
  3. Moyle, Franny. Constance: The Tragic and Scandalous Life of Mrs. Oscar Wilde, n.p.
  4. "Where Beauty Transcends Time: The Archaeology of a Dress". Past Horizons, 31 July 2011.
  5. Sparke, Penny, and Fiona Fisher, eds. The Routledge Companion to Design Studies, p. 90.
  6. "The Actor and the Maker: Ellen Terry and Alice Comyns-Carr". Victoria and Albert Museum website.
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