Anne Gainsford obituary

The Guardian

11-06-2025

My godmother Anne Gainsford, who has died aged 90, was a set designer and maker of costumes and hats for stage, film and television. To me, her crowning glory was making a top hat for Colin Firth as Mr Darcy in the acclaimed BBC adaptation of Pride and Prejudice (1995). Anne was delighted that the actor wore the hat with panache, but was scathing about the anachronistic 'wet shirt' scene.
Top of the toppers, Anne made 12 top hats for a production of Die Meistersinger at the Royal Danish Opera (1996), and toppers for (among others) Ralph Fiennes in Onegin (1999) and Johnny Depp in Finding Neverland (2004) – each meticulously researched to fit the historical date. She insisted on using period techniques and materials, sewing black on black even as her sight deteriorated.
Anne was the daughter of William Gainsford, director of a mining business, the Sheffield Coal Co, and his wife, Helen (nee Fea), a keen needlepoint tapestry embroiderer. She was born at Somersby House in Lincolnshire, birthplace of the poet Alfred, Lord Tennyson. His Charge of the Light Brigade, and troops stationed nearby in the second world war, sparked Anne's lifelong obsession with soldiers' dress. During an exchange in Paris (1952), she staked out the Musée de l'Armée, thrilled by Napoleon's chapeaux and revolution and empire uniforms. She later became an expert in military and naval costumes, making bicornes for Master and Commander (2003).
In wartime, Anne was evacuated to the Presentation Sisters convent school in Matlock, Derbyshire. She then attended St Mary's school, Ascot, and went to Oxford University in 1952 to study history at Lady Margaret Hall. It was a paper on the Italian Renaissance that led Anne to Perugia after she graduated in 1955, to learn Italian, and to opera – her next great passion. Back in London, she studied stage design at the Slade School of Art.
In the late 1950s, Anne worked as a scene painter for 'theatrical polymath and handful' Disley Jones at the Lyric Hammersmith (The Demon Barber, 1959), moving to the Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon and repertory theatre. She got her big break working as design assistant to the Italian director Franco Zeffirelli on productions including Romeo and Juliet at the Teatro Romano in Verona (1964) and her first film, The Taming of the Shrew (1967).
Anne set up the Richmond Studio in 1967 with a fellow designer, Patty Pope. She carved out a niche making headgear for opera and ballet, including Aida (1968) at the Royal Opera House. But from 1983 on, her work was mainly for the screen, often in liaison with the costumiers Cosprop.
Anne was not married but had some tempestuous relationships. Perhaps the most notable was an intense love affair in the 1980s with the writer Sybille Bedford, whom she met at PEN International.
Although she never retired, when work dried up Anne learned to restore furniture, devoted herself to her very English garden in Richmond upon Thames, and enjoyed visiting historical houses with a string of eager acolytes.
Anne's brother, John, died in 2005. She is survived by two nephews, Maximilian and Guy.