BRITAIN: Veteran British fashion designer Hardy Amies, who dressed Queen Elizabeth for half a century, has died at the age of 93.
"He died peacefully in his sleep this afternoon in his home in the country," Mr Tim Maltin, managing director of Hardy Amies Ltd, said yesterday as the industry mourned the Savile Row craftsman who was the epitome of style.
"It is always a shock but his house continues, as he would have wished, to live up to his design style," Mr Maltin said.
The Amies empire spanned the globe, from Australians sporting his ties to South Koreans shielding under his umbrellas and Canadians holding up their trousers with his belts.
Once pressed for an epitaph on his durability in the most fickle of businesses, the elegant designer of haute couture confections said: "I should like to be remembered for promulgating English taste and making it profitable." But it was for dressing the British monarch that he will be remembered - and he never stopped enthusing about his most famous customer.
"The queen is very demanding. She knows exactly what she wants. She wants her clothes to be friendly," Amies once said in an interview. - (Reuters)