Dressmaker to stars finally gets its own Bafta

IT HAS been 175 years in the making. The costume company which has worked on dozens of Oscar and Baftawinning films and countless theatre productions is finally to be recognised in its own right.

Angels Costumes, a family-run business, will pick up the Outstanding British Contribution to Cinema Award at next weekend’s Bafta ceremony, as it receives its first public honour.

Tim Angel, 66, the company’s chairman and a former Bafta chairman, said he was delighted staff had finally been recognised after 175 years, and seven generations, of being “always the bridesmaid, never the bride”. The ceremony will see dedicated team members, including Mr Angel’s children Daniel, Emma and Jeremy, who work alongside him, pick up their award live at the Bafta ceremony at the Royal Opera House this Sunday.

Films on which the family has worked have won 32 Oscars and 34 Baftas for best costume. Countless other films featuring actors dressed almost entirely by Angels have been nominated at various awards ceremonies in other categories, and virtually every notable television drama in recent years has used clothes from its one million items and eight miles of hanging rails.

Dame Pippa Harris, chairman of Bafta’s Film Committee, said the company’s service to the industry was “extraordinary”, stretching back far longer than the existence of film itself, adding: “I cannot think of a more deserving recipient.”

Among the dozens of directors with whom Angels has worked are Alfred Hitchcock, Lord Attenborough, Alan Parker, Anthony Minghella, Martin Scorsese and Steven Spielberg. The company has dressed actors from the Edwardian theatre luminary Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree right up to the emerging stars of today.

Charlton Heston, Sir Laurence Olivier, Sir Anthony Hopkins and Dustin Hoffman are among the stars to have visited the Angels premises, while they

have dressed almost every award-winning actress from Elizabeth Taylor to Dame Judi Dench.

This year, Angels supplied costumes to several films nominated for Baftas, including Cinderella, The Danish Girl, Bridge of Spies and The Lady in the Van. Its previous award-winning cos

tumes appeared in Olivier’s 1948 Hamlet, Doctor Zhivago, Star Wars, Chariots of Fire, The Last Emperor, The English Patient and Shakespeare in Love.

Of the 120 members of staff, many have been working at Angels since the Eighties, with those responsible for specialist military costumes, police uniforms, specialist costume making and the warehouse clocking in more than 20 years each.