Page 512 - The Secret Museum

The Sleeping Beauty dress from 1946 was packed netside-up so, when we

opened the box and lifted out the tissue paper, we saw a mass of white netting, like
down. The sixties’ dress was packed the right way up, with rolls of tissue paper
underneath the bodice and tissue packed into the bust.

The tutus are packed two to a box. Beneath the sixties’ dress is another of
Fonteyn’s dresses, the ‘Rose Adagio’ dress, and beneath her original 1946 dress is a
tutu she wore to dance Odette in Swan Lake.

After we had put the beautiful Fonteyn tutus back to bed, we had a look at two
ballet shoes. One was Margot Fonteyn’s, signed in her hand, kept in its original
‘Freed’ box. The other, much smaller slipper belonged to Ninette de Valois, the

founder of The Royal Ballet. She danced in the shoes in the 1920s and later gave
them to Fonteyn, as a gift, writing inside ‘Margot with love, Ninette de Valois 1954’.

We packed those away, in Judith’s special way – she can tell if anyone has been
in her shoe boxes, as no one folds tissue in quite the same way.

Beside the shoes was a clothes rail with three costumes hanging on it. Judith took
hold of one. ‘The greatest costume in here, for me, is this one,’ she said, and she
unzipped a white bag to reveal a dark green chiffon dress. ‘It’s the dress Margot
Fonteyn wore to dance Ondine in 1958.’ It was the first ballet Judith ever saw.
Ondine, the sea goddess, first appears on stage shimmering in a fountain, looking like
water. ‘I sat with my mother, up in the gods, and when Margot Fonteyn took the stage

my mother dug me in the ribs – “Look! There she is!” I said, “No, that’s not her,
that’s the light.” I’ll never forget that moment. Imagine the effect on an eight year
old.’

Many years later, when Judith began working as the conservator of costumes at the
Royal Opera House, she was handed a box. ‘I lifted the lid and I burst into tears,’ she
told me. ‘It looked just like a piece of seaweed, but I knew it was the dress.’ The
green slip is now in storage. ‘It keeps me happy,’ says Judith.

The other two costumes on the rail beside the green Ondine slip were a tiny-
waisted waistcoat belonging to Nureyev – who so often danced with Fonteyn – and a

gown worn by Doreen Wells when she danced the lead role in the sixties’ production
of La Fille Mal Gardée.
I loved seeing those, because La Fille Mal Gardée was my first ballet, the one I

remember seeing with my mum at the Royal Opera House.