Text III Fashion in the art schools (part 1)

Practical skills had traditionally been learnt within the industry and at trade schools such as the Technical School of Dressmaking at Barret Street in London’s West End, which opened in 1915. From the late nineteenth century, trade schools were set up throughout the country to provide skilled workers for local industries. The first Needletrade School in London was opened in Shoreditch in 1906 to cater for the wholesale clothing trades, which were based in the East End of London. The Barret Street school, in contrast aimed to train young women for the more exclusive fashion houses and provided full-time day release and evening classes. There were also private establishments, such as the Paris Academy of Dressmaking in Old Bond Street. By the 1930s courses on dress were also offered within many art colleges, but the emphasis remained upon teaching technical, rather than creative skills.

Commissioned by the Council for Art and Industry in 1939, Design and the Designer in the Dress Trade was an important report that was eventually published in 1945. It describes how the designer in the British Fashion industry was not considered to have a creative role, but rather one that adapted and translated Paris models. The manufacturers interviewed were adamant that this role could only be filled by promotion from within the industry. Indeed, it states that ‘the possibility of any Art School, as at present constituted, turning out designers was generally dismissed by the manufacturers as fantastic’.

This attitude was not surprising. The majority of Britain’s art schools were run by those with a pronounced bias towards the fine arts of traditional crafts. They were often contemptuous or dismissive of industry and, at the extreme, considered it a social evil. Manufacturers in turn retaliated by ignoring or mocking the naivety of college-trained students.

While a fine art student at the Royal College of Art in the 1930s, Muriel Pemberton challenged the limitations of existing courses by arranging to work on a part-time basis at the London fashion house of Reville while continuing her fine art studies. In the late 1930s, when she was working as a fashion illustrator for the Daily Herald, she introduced evening classes in creative fashion at St Martin’s School of Art, under the umbrella of Graphics School.

As a result of reorganization and expansion of further education in the post-war years, combined with the allocation of state-founded grants, students from all social classes now had access to higher education. Fashion departments were established in art schools throughout Britain. (In France and America there have always been far fewer schools, and most a private establishments.) After the war Muriel Pemberton’s pioneering course was developed on a full-time basis and, under her inspired tutorage, St Martin’s embarked upon a new approach to teaching fashion which included contextual studies in dress and art history. Throughout her career she actively campaigned to elevate the status of fashion within the art school system, and her work has been sustained by many notable figures, including Bobby Hillson (who introduced the fashion MA course in 1978) and fashion designer Wendy Dagworthy. By the late 1940s a number of colleges had started fashion schools, including Manchester, Leeds and Leicester.