Alice Comyns Carr

Alice Vansittart Comyns Carr, née Strettell (1850–1927), was a British costume designer whose work is associated with the Aesthetic dress movement.

Comyns Carr (referred to as "Carr" below) was the daughter of Laura Vansittart Neale and the Reverend Alfred Baker Strettell, the British consular chaplain in Genoa, Italy, and subsequently the rector of St. Martin’s Church in Canterbury. Her sister, Alma Strettell, became a writer and translator.

In 1873, she married J. Comyns Carr, a drama and art critic, author, playwright and director of the Grosvenor Gallery. They had three children: Philip, Dorothy, and Arthur, who became a Member of Parliament.

As a costume designer, Carr was associated with the Aesthetic dress movement and its championship of looser, more flowing garments with theatrical touches such as lace and embroidery. It was rumored that she was the inspiration behind the comic figure of "Mrs Cimabue Brown" that the cartoonist George du Maurier invented to mock the Aestheticists in some of his drawings for Punch magazine.

For two decades, Carr was actor Ellen Terry's chief costume designer, succeeding Patience Harris. Carr began consulting with Terry and Harris in 1882, but the two designers' tastes didn't align well, and Harris resigned in 1887 following disagreements over costumes for the plays Henry VIII and The Amber Heart. The latter became the first production on which Carr had primary responsibility for Terry's costumes, though her influence is clear in designs as early as the 1885 production of Faust. Carr and Terry continued working together until 1902, when Terry left the Lyceum Theatre.

One of Carr's best-known works is a costume that used beetle wings to create an iridescent effect. The dress was worn by Terry as Lady Macbeth in the Shakespeare play Macbeth. It was designed by Carr and crocheted by dressmaker Ada Nettleship to simulate a soft chain mail with also something of an effect of serpent scales. Nettleship had used beetle wings in some of her earlier designs, and this dress employed over 1,000 beetle wings. The restored costume is now on display in Terry's home, Smallhythe Place, near Tenterden in Kent. The American artist John Singer Sargent painted Terry in the dress in 1889. Sargent was a friend of Carr's and painted her portrait around the same time.

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