Background
Victor Frank Stiebel was born in 1907 in Durban, South Africa.
Victor Frank Stiebel was born in 1907 in Durban, South Africa.
Among his more famous designs was the going-away outfit for Princess Margaret"s wedding in 1960. He arrived in Britain in 1924 to study architecture at Jesus College, Cambridge. Having designed for theatre wardrobe at university, he worked as a dress designer for the House of Reville for three years beginning in 1929.
Founded by Wallace Reville Terry and Mission Rossiter, Reville (also known as Reville-Terry and Reville & Rossiter) was one of the foremost court dressmakers and fashion houses in London before the First World War.
Here Stiebel learned the art of fashion design, this being the method by which the trade was learned prior to fashion design courses being established at the art schools. Steibel opened his own fashion house at 22 Bruton Street, just off Berkeley Square in 1932.
This proved so successful that he was able to expand the showroom to the Georgian ballroom next door within a year. Vogue said of his designs: "Stiebel has taken the lives and hearts and aspirations of Englishwomen and transmuted them into clothes, adding that touch of the artist, something that is rich and strange and exciting."
Wartime and post-war career
Called "Utility Fashion", each designer in the scheme produced a coat, dress, suit and shirt or blouse.
Stiebel returned to designing in 1946, succeeding Bianca Mosca as head of the house of Jacqmar, and becoming Chairman of the Incorporated Society of London Fashion Designers.
He was commissioned to design new uniforms for the WRENS (1951) and the WRAF (1954). Stiebel was forced to close the business after just five years, in 1963, having become confined to a wheel chair as a result of multiple sclerosis. Hardy Amies took on all 120 of Stiebel"s employees.
In 1968, he published an account of his youth in South Africa.