Costume conservation: My Fair Lady – Eliza Doolittle | V&A

It's an exquisite piece in ivory and cream. I think we definitely see Cecil Beaton's genius and design aesthetic within the costume worn by Julie Andrews. My Fair Lady is a musical written by Lerner and Lowe that premiered on Broadway in 1956, telling the tale of Professor Henry Higgins and a bet he makes that he can turn anybody into a high-class society person. So who becomes the person of interest? Well, Eliza Doolittle, a cockney flower seller who he takes under his wing, teaches her how to speak in his opinion properly and sees if she can pass as a lady of high society. It was Julie Andrews who originated the role of Eliza Doolittle on Broadway and performed there before the show transferred to the West End, receiving the most wonderful reviews and really cementing herself as that role on stage. We're very lucky in the V&A to own one of these historic garments from the West End production of My Fair Lady, worn by Julie Andrews not at the beginning of Eliza Doolittle's journey. So this is when she has undergone some of that training and tuition and she's being presented at the Ball. This costume is made from the most beautiful ivory satin and silk chiffon, which today is in need of some conservation. It's been at the Museum since it was purchased in the 1980s, so 40 years in storage. It's the first time that we've actually had the chance to put it in a display here at the Museum, so it's really exciting to be able to share it with the public and get to work on such an iconic piece of theatre history. So this is quite a complex garment, it's got lots of different materials in it, so we've got crepeline and we've also got silk satin. Some of the construction around this top area here, you can see that we've lost some of that overlay and the overlay is a really delicate fabric. Something that does concern me about this as an overall object is it's really heavy and a lot of that comes from having all of this heavy beadwork and also all of these metal threads at the bottom and that will ultimately be putting quite a lot of stress on the waistband up here. What we can do is work with our colleagues in costume mounting to make sure that when it's on the mannequin we're actually having a really secure well-fitting mannequin and that all feeds into the long-term preservation of the piece. What I'm doing now is a kind of preliminary filling out of this mannequin based on the measurements that I've taken from the dress. The reason why I'm doing it that way is because the dress is quite delicate and we need quite a bit of support in the dress so that it doesn't want to slide down. And also to try and get the correct placement of the bust because the dress is from the 1950s so we want that quite pointed shape of the bust. Wow. I know. Look at this. I mean gosh I haven't seen it full out of its box. No it's been in this box for so long. I mean the red jewels absolutely catch your eye don't they and amongst the sort of ivory. Yeah you can really imagine it kind of shining out on stage can't you. So it seems that there's quite a bit of work that will need to be done though. You know there here I'm seeing these areas. And this is something that I really want to talk to you about actually was the kind of the level of conservation because we you know we do want to keep some of her story and some of its story as a theatre piece. Yeah I think it's absolutely important to keep these that's all about that you know the labour of the garment really and how that worked. And we've got the label and the label is lovely and it's Miss Julie Andrews typed on the typewriter of course. So what are the next steps? They'll definitely be some of the beads where I need to go in and secure the loose threads. I think because we've got some splits and holes I'm going to dye some fabric that's the right kind of weight and make sure that I can get a really nice sympathetic colour match. And then on the outside those patches will be just to make sure that we're not going to have any more tears around areas that are already whipping. And then I think on the inside I'll have a look at how that weight distribution is across the waistband and reintroduce some of those construction stitches that have been lost. So it's going to need quite a few hours. A fair amount of hours. Our silk crepoline is slightly off-white anyway and all I want to do is add a slight bit of warmth to it. It's a little bit cool for the dress so I've chosen dye stuffs that have brown tones, orange tones, yellow tones and that seems to be the colours that we've got on a reference material they are giving the right kind of shades to match the dress. The ratio of these stock solutions is what provides the subtle differences between the final four samples that I'm going to have at the end of the process. No matter how many times I dye I always have my dye cycle up. The dye cycle is the recipe so if I've prepared my ingredients then I need this recipe to tell me exactly what temperature to have my water, exactly how long I need to hold different temperatures for those different stages. So this has had its two hour dye cycle and now that it's all finished it's been cooling down over the last half hour or so so it should be ready for me to take them out give them a rinse and see what our final colours are like. So I'm just going to take a little sample of each corner just to get an idea of how close my colours are. So this is my completely undyed crepoline and if I grab a bit of my black we can see it's just a very subtle kind of knocking back. It is technically off-white but it does look quite white against the more kind of yellow tones. So I'm going to find an area where I do need to do some work and just kind of offer it up and see how those colours match. The costume and indeed all the costumes for My Fair Lady were designed by Cecil Beaton. Now Cecil Beaton was an incredibly artistic individual. He was born in 1904 and is probably best known as a photographer. He was an amazing fashion photographer for Vogue and Vanity Fair and in 1937 he became the official court photographer for the British royal family. And of course it's that wonderful insight into glamour photography he brings to being a stage designer. We're very lucky at the V&A not only to have that wonderful dress worn by Julie Andrews but also to have some of Cecil Beaton's designs for My Fair Lady. And one of those is this really iconic piece which is showing some of those costumes and this was really really important and iconic in that whole history of musical theatre because the black and white ascot scene is very different to anything that had been seen before. We think about the world of musical theatre as a wide colour palette, the opportunity to use that. Suddenly in this scene you're using two colours, black and white, very bold, very iconographic. Oh this is such a gorgeous costume and the bead work is just exquisite. In 2018, 60 years after the West End premiere of My Fair Lady, the Lincoln Centre in New York decide to revive it and this time the designer is Catherine Zuber. I love the boldness of the centre detail, the beading is exquisitely done. I mean Cecil Beaton was such a genius. It's always been quite daunting to create costumes for such a beloved musical that was originally designed by such a master. Anything that we've done in our production of My Fair Lady is an homage to his brilliance really. So this is a strap that I've put in place so I've stitched them into an inner waistband channel. So by stitching them further down rather than right on this edge, it's helping really support the weight bearing area. Obviously this is quite friable, a lot of the beading has already been lost. But actually what's great is once the mannequin's finished, the dress won't need the straps at all. Amazing. Yeah, so it'll go from being like this and we'll just take them out entirely and you will just kind of get that floating as you say. So it will be there floating like that. We won't even need to see this. It's going to look absolutely stunning. I'm very excited. It's wonderful to finally see that costume worn by Julie Andrews on display in all its glory. A transformation arguably echoing that of the character itself and to be reunited with these other wonderful pieces from My Fair Lady history. To really tell that story of one of the most iconic musicals of the 20th century.