Hartnell is famous as the man who made London a viable twentieth century fashion centre during the inter-war years. Born to an upwardly mobile family in Streatham, in southwest London, his parents were then publicans and owners of the Crown & Sceptre, at the top of Streatham Hill. Educated at Mill Hill School, Hartnell became an undergraduate at Magdalene College, Cambridge and read Modern Languages. His main interest lay in performing, and designing productions for the university Footlights and he was noticed by the London press as the designer of a Footlights production which transferred to Daly’s Theatre, London. He then worked unsuccessfully for two London designers, including the celebrated Lucile, whom he sued for damages when several of his drawings appeared unattributed in her weekly fashion column in the London Daily Sketch.[2] In 1923 he opened his own business at 10 Bruton Street, Mayfair, with the financial help of his father and first business colleague, his sister Phyllis. The Doctor Who actor William Hartnell was his second cousin.

Thanks to his Cambridge connections, Hartnell acquired a clientele of débutantes and their mothers intent on fashionable originality in dress design for a busy social life centred on the London Season. and was considered by some to be a good London alternative to Parisian or older London dress houses. The London press seized on the novelty of his youth and gender. Although expressing the spirit of the Bright Young Things and Flappers, his designs overlaid the harder silhouettes with a fluid romanticism in detail and construction. This was most evident in Hartnell’s predilection for evening and bridal gowns, gowns for court presentations, and afternoon gowns for guests at society weddings. Hartnell’s success ensured international press coverage and a flourishing trade with those no longer content with ‘safe’ London clothes derived from Parisian designs. Hartnell became popular with the younger stars of stage and screen, and went on to dress such leading ladies as Gladys Cooper, Elsie Randolph, Gertrude Lawrence (also a client of Edward Molyneux), Jessie Matthews, Merle Oberon, Evelyn Laye and Anna Neagle. Even top French stars Alice Delysia and Mistinguett were impressed by the young Englishman’s genius.

Alarmed by the lack of sales, Phyllis insisted that Norman cease his pre-occupation with the design of evening clothes and he create practical day clothes. He achieved a subtlety and ingenuity with British woollens, previously scarcely imagined in London dressmaking, yet already successfully demonstrated in Paris by Coco Chanel, who showed a keen interest in his 1927 and 1929 collections when shown in Paris. Hartnell successfully emulated his British predecessor and hero Charles Frederick Worth by taking his designs to the heart of world fashion. Hartnell specialised in expensive and often lavish embroidery as an integral part of his most expensive clothes, creating the luxurious and exclusive effect which justified the high prices. They were also created to deflect the ready-to wear copyists. The Hartnell in-house embroidery workroom was the largest in London couture and continued until his death, also producing the embroidered Christmas cards for clients and press during quiet August days, a practical form of publicity at which Hartnell was always adept. The originality and intricacy of Hartnell embroideries were frequently described in the press, especially in reports of the original wedding dresses he designed for socially prominent young women during the 1920s and 1930s, a natural extension of his designs for them as débutantes, when many wore his innovative evening dresses and day clothes.