Fashion at the Royal College of Art: Paris, Kensington (1948-56)

White-gloved, impeccable and intimidating, Madge Garland brought experience from a long and varied career to the College. Self-made and self-taught, decades earlier she had run away from a domineering father, who had prevented her from going to university, and fallen in with a bohemian crowd that included Virginia Woolf, Gertrude Stein and Man Ray. In her twenties, she landed a job at British Vogue through tenacity and door-knocking, rising to become its Fashion Editor. Eventually, Garland became a sought-after consultant to industry and an advisor to the Council of Industrial Design. It was in this phase of her career that she was introduced to Robin Darwin, who would become Principal of the Royal College of Art and appoint her as the first Professor of Fashion. When Garland was profiled in Harper’s Bazaar, her new post was described as ‘the first official recognition of fashion as a serious industry.’ Alumni would later recall a terrifying and exacting critic who expected her students to look and behave impeccably at all times, but it was that same imposing presence that gave the School its influence and power. Gina Fratini, who graduated in 1953, recalled: ‘There was a woman actually walking around in couture clothes … that to me was heaven. [She] epitomised everything to do with fashion, with style, and I sat in awe.’

Notable alumni from the earliest days of the Fashion School included Joanne Brogden (graduated 1953 and later to become the third Professor of Fashion in 1971), Gina Fratini (1953), Helen Jones (1954), David Watts (1954) and Julian Robinson (1955). The student cohort was largely drawn from working-class young women, and Garland maintained a ‘finishing school’ element to the tuition, with classes in literature and art history. She felt it was crucial that her new breed of designers should be able to hold their own with a prestigious client base in the future, but may also have been trying to give young women the education she had craved at their age yet been denied.

The School of Fashion was established in a large, near-derelict Edwardian house at 20 Ennismore Gardens in Knightsbridge, physically removed from the other College buildings and isolated from the heart of the RCA, which centred around the museums district of South Kensington. The School opened modestly, with ten students, one professor, and two other members of staff. Garland was rigorous about creating an immaculate work environment to reinforce the need for perfection in students’ behaviour and execution of their craft. A pragmatic spirit made the most of the available space: a huge L-shaped workroom doubled up as a location for soirées, while the annual dress show took place in the drawing room. Garland’s office was suffused with pink, dressed with heavy chintz curtains and theatrical lighting. Image was all.

The fashion industry began to change in tandem with Madge’s tenure. The RCA’s Fashion School was being equipped to support a growing international business, itself transformed by the expansion of chain stores and the expectation of women of all classes that they would have access to ready-to-wear fashions. Crucially, Garland was determined that her students should receive tuition not from art tutors but from skilled members of the industry. To this end, she recruited pattern-cutters and tailors from fashion houses to lead one-to-one sessions, an approach that was initially controversial. As she would later explain, ‘I tried so hard to marry art and industry.’ The diverse curriculum she devised included elements of dress history, accessories, children’s clothing, designing with a price limit, and lingerie. A millinery element was also important, but hats were only considered as part of an overall outfit: it would be some decades later that a distinct millinery course would be launched.