Why designer of Sarah’s wedding dress ‘fell out’ with Carole Middleton,
When the Duchess of York commissioned Lindka Cierach to design her wedding dress on July 23 1986, the couturier catapulted her into the limelight, earning her nothing but praise for the lavish gown.
She founded her own company, Lindka Cierach Couture, in 1979 and her first commission was a wedding dress for a Bahranian princess, which drew attention from the Middle East.
But it was not until she designed Fergie’s £35,000 ivory duchess satin gown, with its 17½ft-long train, that her place was cemented in fashion history.
The dress, with a waistline which dropped to a point and a scooped neckline, proved a foil for her veil and headdress. Manolo Blahnik created her shoes, which were beaded with bees and ribbons in pearls and diamante.
Initially Fergie wanted teddy bears and helicopters embroidered on the dress, but Cierach pointed her in a different direction.
But, in the four decades since that historic day, Fergie, 65, has been in and out of the headlines for her romantic entanglements, financial disasters, and struggles with cancer and mental health.
While she and Prince Andrew were divorced ten years later, the parents of Princess Beatrice and Princess Eugenie, still live together in the £30 million mansion Royal Lodge in the heart of Windsor Great Park.
Now, in an extraordinary parallel, Cierach, 73, has had her own share of adverse publicity as she has negotiated life in the aftermath of the Royal wedding.
The London College of Fashion graduate, who once dated TV supremo Michael Grade, eventually gave up on the fashion world to become a sound healer after a public fallout with the Princess of Wales’ mother Carole Middleton.
She fell out with Carole Middleton over her outfit for William and Kate’s wedding. She selected the couturier to design her outfit, spending four months attending many secret fittings, before ditching her at the 11th hour.
The designer, who numbers Queen Rania of Jordan and Hollywood star Catherine Zeta-Jones amongst her clients, has always refused to discuss the dispute.
But reportedly Carole asked the couturier to deliver the unfinished outfit to her home, so she could show it to her friends, and Cierach would only allow the garment to leave her studio if she accompanied it.
According to a source, Cierach was taken aback when Middleton claimed the designer was ‘unaccommodating’ and said she no longer wished to wear the outfit.
She was reported to have been left surprised by the ‘unconventional’ request and ‘completely bemused after all the hard work she had put into creating the outfit’.
It is now 12 years since Cierach teamed up with Newcastle University graduate Cherub Sanson, to found the Sister Sound Circle, a ‘sacred space, celebrating and supporting women in our community.’
‘I used to get very drained by being with difficult people,’ she said pointedly in an online comment explaining about her new path.’
‘I started Sister Sound Circle in 2013, with my spirit mama, Lindka Cierach,’ wrote Sanson, ‘through my own desire to sing in a safe environment with a sisterhood, who’s (sic) ethos was to complete each other, not compete with each other.
‘It’s been an epic journey, from starting out – not sure how to hold a circle, or what it should consist of – we kept holding them under the light of every full moon, and our Sister Sound Circle grew and grew.
‘Ten years on, we have opened our circle to women both living in and travelling through London from all over the world….Together we sing, drum. share, laugh, cry, meditate and elevate our consciousness as one tribe.’
Born in Lesotho, Cierach spent her early years in Africa, with her siblings Kasia, who ran a soft furnishing studio, and brother John, who ran a wet fish and food business.
Her father Edek, who was Polish and a devout Catholic, spent much of World War II in a Siberian concentration camp, building the trans-Siberian railway, and went onto map Africa for the British Government.
Her mother Diana taught her how to sew. ‘My mother helped to develop my love of sewing,’ she once said, ‘as I used to watch her doing embroidery and smocking.
‘She has a fine intellectual mind, and her dream was to have a career – but her father poo-poohed all her ambitions and sent her to Africa to be “tidied up”. That is where she met my father.’
Cierach attended a convent school in London and worked at Vogue magazine before studying at the London College of Fashion. On graduation, she was apprenticed to Japanese designer Yuki.
She soon gained a reputation for designing exquisite wedding gowns for society brides such as Lady Rose Cecil, daughter of the Marquess of Salisbury, Jocelyn Stevens’s daughter Pandora, and the heiress Charlotte Monckton.
‘I was overwhelmed and delighted to get a call from Sarah Ferguson the day after her engagement,’ she said afterwards. ‘I had never made anything for her before, although I had met her at a couple of social occasions.
‘She wanted me to do some wedding dress sketches, and I sketched like crazy. I even dreamed I had a vision from the vaults of Westminster Abbey.
‘On the morning, she was due to ring me back, there was total panic. I locked myself out of the house and stood on the doorstep hearing the telephone ring, but we managed to get together the following day.
‘Once I started to work with her, I realised what was appropriate. She has strong looks and a wonderful body. And we had great fun, although she was under tremendous pressure.
‘We joked about putting bumble bees and helicopters into the design. Seriously, I felt the dress had to be something that would live through history.’
Five full-time beaders then embroidered the bride’s own coat of arms on the garment with thistles and bees interwoven with the couple’s heraldic initials and naval anchors with waves and hearts.
Afterwards Fergie wrote in her memoir: ‘Lindka was a genius; I knew she could make the most flattering gown ever, and she had. It was amazingly boned, like a corset.
‘We’d chosen duchess satin because it is the creamiest material in the world. It never creases. It is smooth as glass and hangs beautifully, without a single bulge; it made my reduced figure look even better.’
The following year Cierach was named Designer of the Year. Jilly Cooper based her fictional designer in the 2002 bestseller Pandora on her and she took part in the 2006 ITV series Ladette to Lady, tutoring foulmouthed young girls to speak nicely.
But, no matter how many diverse projects she has been involved with, she will always be remembered for Fergie’s flattering wedding gown…
