Stella Mary Newton

Turning to costume design, she became an assistant to George Sheringham and then an independent designer, designing for T. Eliot's pageant play The Rock (1934) and his Murder in the Cathedral (1935). And The family Reunion. Designing for theatre and fashion, she opened her own shop in the 1930s. In 1936 she married the art critic Eric Newton. During the war they lectured on art history and design for Cambridge University's extramural department. A developing expertise in the history of dress enabled her to re-date paintings through the internal evidence of dress, as in her appendix to her husband's Tintoretto (1952). She worked as an adviser to the National Gallery between 1952 and 1961. In 1965, she founded a new postgraduate course in the History of Dress at the Courtauld Institute of Art, and ran it until 1976. Her students studied textile conservation as well as garment-making, and she encouraged Karen Finch to found the Textile Conservation Course at Hampton Court in 1975. Newton received an OBE in 1976. She was the subject of a 1992 documentary for Channel 4's Third Wave.

Stella Mary Newton studied at Withington Girls' School. The recorded working language is English. The field of work recorded is history of costume, Medieval clothing and Renaissance clothing. Works named in the authority record are Fashion in the Age of the Black Prince. Distinctions recorded are Officer of the Order of the British Empire.

• Health, Art and Reason: dress reformers of the 19th century, 1974 • Renaissance Theatre Costume and the Sense of the Historic Past, 1975 • Fashion in the Age of the Black Prince: a study of the years 1340-1365, 1980 • The Dress of the Venetians, 1495-1525, 1988