Sir Hardy Amies

As a former employee of Hardy Amies (his in-house PR manager from 1966 to 1968) I have no wish to question too far Jane Mulvagh's admirable but perhaps too admiring obituary [6 March: click here to read], writes David Evans.

However, I suggest that Amies's impact on women's fashion was less significant than on the menswear industry. His work for Hepworths (now Next) in the Sixties galvanised the then fossilised manufacturing clothing sector. Coupled with a sound advertising campaign, the Hardy Amies/Hepworth annual men's catwalk shows at the Savoy put the idea of a designed suit firmly in the marketplace and did wonders for Hepworths' annual figures, regularly notched up by 10 per cent each year. This was the British public's first view of positive designer branding.

Had Amies maintained this momentum, sustaining a properly financed studio and marketing policy, his label would have been as strong in the Anglophone world as Pierre Cardin, whose own menswear line predated Amies by about two years.

Jane Mulvagh's view of his loyalty to his staff is not a characteristic some would recognise. The "family" described had dispersed by the time of his death, and the status of the trust he founded for his staff's benefit was obscure, following the apparent sale of his interest to the Luxury Brands Group. David Duncan Smith, incidentally, left the company last year.

Alas, by an unfortunate solecisim your picture production left this arbiter of fashion wearing his breast pocket on the wrong side of his jacket.