Costume design by Carl Toms for Vivien Leigh as Marguerite in the play The Lady of the Camellias, Old Vic tour of Australia, New Zealand and South America, 1961-62.

Carl Toms (1927-1999) was one of the most successful British theatre designers of the late 20th century. He designed settings and costumes for all the major British theatre companies, including the National Theatre (both at the Old Vic and on the South Bank), the Royal Shakespeare Company (though never for Shakespeare) and Chichester Festival Theatre, and for numerous productions in London’s West End. He had a long association with the plays of Tom Stoppard, collaborating with the director Peter Wood. Toms also worked for opera and ballet companies in Britain, Europe and the United States, designed for films (memorably creating the skimpy fur bikini for Raquel Welch which was the abiding memory of the 1967 epic One Million Years B.C.), and was responsible for the redecoration and refurbishment of the Theatre Royals at Windsor (1965), Bath (1982) and Richmond (1990). In 1969 he was design consultant for the Investiture of the Prince of Wales at Caernarvon Castle.

Toms was born in Nottinghamshire and began his training at the Mansfield College of Art, before going on to the Royal College of Art and then to the Old Vic School. There he was trained by Margaret Harris, a third of the celebrated Motley design partnership. Harris introduced Toms to Oliver Messel, the most celebrated designer of the mid 20th century, and Toms became Messel’s assistant for six years (1952-57), making many of the models of Messel’s designs now held in the V&A.

The stage version of Dumas’s The Lady of the Camellias toured by the Old Vic Company, was an early success for Toms, but was never seen in Britain. Vivien Leigh led the tour, appearing as Viola in Twelfth Night, Paola in Christopher Fry’s adaptation of Giraudoux’s Duel of Angels and Marguerite Gautier, ‘The Lady of the Camellias’. Marguerite was a role that she had long wanted to play and, though audiences found the play old-fashioned, Leigh’s performance was highly praised, as were her costumes. A New Zealand journalist wrote of her ‘spectacular entrance in the second scene. A gale of admiring gasps always sweeps through the theatre as Miss Leigh enters in a floor-length cloak of frothy white ostrich feathers over her billowing white ball dress’ (Elizabeth Reeve, New Zealand, Autumn-Winter 1962).

The design belonged to Harry Schneider, who worked for the costumiers, Berman and Nathan's, and made the costumes for Carl Toms.