One of the first consequences of putting Colin Goddard’s biography of Marc Anthony up on line was discovering more about Val St Cyr — one of the two founders of the House of Baroque — who is mentioned about half way through the biography.

Val St Cyr was born Arthur Andrews Hilder in Chartham, Kent, on November 1, 1890 — a son of Edward Gorham Hilder and his wife Emma Elizabeth (née Hannam). (Val’s birth was registered at Bridge, Kent, in the October quarter of that year.) He was admitted to Hither Green School on September 24, 1900, when his address is listed as 80 Effingham Road, Lewisham. A few months earlier, his father — the stationmaster at Sandling Junction station, near Maidstone — had been run down by an “up” express train traveling toward London.

By 1911 — according to the English census data for that year — he was living at 56 Mt. Pleasant Road in Lewisham (with his mother and three siblings) and working as a clerk for a shipping company. However, in what appears to be a promotional brochure about the House of Baroque, probably dating from the late 1920s or early 1930s, it states that:

While a schoollboy [Val] drew for magazines and illustrated school stories and when, in his early teens he was on the stage he was also contributing to the pages of well known papers and magazines and designing for theatrical productions.

His stage career having lasted for some years, he decided on another definite step and took up fashion designing as his sole profession and not, as hitherto, a part-time affair.

By about 1916 he was working as a designer for the fashion designer and court-dressmaker “Madame” Elizabeth Handley-Seymour during the First World War. At least one of Val St Cyr’s designs from that time — a “Moyen Age” teagown, dark blue and pale grey-blue with fur trim — can be found in the archives of the Victoria & Albert Museum.

After the war, “upon a November morning in 1921”, Val went on to co-found the “House of Baroque” (actually Baroque Ltd.) with his close friend Ernest Pacey (“St Cyr”) Sands. From 1921 to at least 1932 the company may have had facilities at 53 New Cavendish Street because Val St. Cyr is listed as a “designer” in the London telephone directory at that address.

Apparently the Victoria & Albert Museum holds copies of about 40 designs for dresses and other items by Val St Cyr. According to an e-mail from one of the V&A’s staff, this unusual costume (a coat that looks, in part, like a striped, patent leather handbag) was catalogued (by an unidentified V&A staff member) as having been designed for the Folies Bergères in Paris in about 1930.

For several years it appears that the House of Baroque was a highly regarded, well connected, London-based fashion and design house with premises at 97 New Bond Street in the West End. Either prior to or after being situated in New Bond Street, the House of Baroque also had premises at 37/38 Margaret Street, Cavendish Square.

The House of Baroque continued to provide design services into the early part of the 1960s before its owners sold up and retired. Val is last recorded in the London phone books in 1969 at 194 Cromwell Road in Earls Court.

Val St. Cyr’s nephew, Miles Golding, who lives in New Zealand, is very interested in learning whatever else there may be to know about his “eccentric” uncle Val. He can be contacted by e-mail. A page on Miles’ web site contains additional interesting imagery and information related to Val and the House of Baroque.