The Chain Store Challengecurrent students included Sally Tuffin, Marian Foale^4 and Ken Russell.^5 For
two years I studied for the National Design Diploma with fashion as my
principal subject. Our painting classes were often taken by Peter Blake^6 and
Quentin Crisp^7 was the life model. He was very popular because of his ability
to remain perfectly still for hour after hour, and because he never took breaks
as other models did. Amongst my fellow students, the two who seemed least
likely to succeed at the time, were Ian Drury^8 and Peter Greenaway.^9 After
my first year, Daphne Brooker left to become Head of Fashion at what was
then Kingston School of Art and I continued my studies at the Royal College
of Art.
head of the Fashion School at Kingston School of Art, later Kingston Polytechnic and later
still, Kingston University, from 1962 until her retirement in 1992, she was very largely
responsible for establishing a prototypical model for design education in the UK, and there
are several generations of designers at all levels within the industry who acknowledge her as
their principal mentor.
- Marian Foale and Sally Tuffin. ‘Students of fashion at Walthamstow School of Art, Foale
and Tuffin both studied at the Royal College of Art, which they left in 1961. They set up as
partners in a private dressmaking business and their chance came in 1962 when their clothes
were bought by the London store, Woollands. Their looks aimed at the young ready-to-wear
market and Foale and Tuffin were at the heart of the London fashion revolution. Based on
Carnaby Street, they and their designs reflected the fashion influences of the 1960s. Beginning
with Pop Art, especially that of Hockney, then Op, they moved through an Art Deco phase
towards the romanticism of old lace.’ McDowell, C. (1984) McDowell’s Directory of Twentieth
Century Fashion, London: Muller p. 142. - Russell, Ken. ‘British director Ken Russell was 42 when his film of D.H. Lawrence’s
Women in Love placed him in the ranks of movie directors of international stature. For more
than a decade before that, however, British television viewers had been treated to a succession
of his skilled TV biographies of great artists like Frederick Delius and Isadora Duncan ... he is
the only British director in history ever to have three films playing first-run engagements in
London simultaneously: The Music Lovers, The Devils and The Boyfriend. Lyon, C. and Doll,
S. (1984) The MacMillan Dictionary of Films and Film makers, London: MacMillan, p. 472. - Blake, Peter, painter and graphic artist, London since 1956. ‘In style and manner,
Blake had a culture break-through to population millions and was able to speak in
visual terms in a voice that was at once direct, without art complications, and “popular”.’
Williams, S. (1996) in J. Cerrito (ed.) Contemporary Artists, Detroit: St James Press pp. 130–1. - Crisp, Quentin. Commercial artist, artist’s model, broadcaster, wit and gay campaigner,
author of The Naked Civil Servant, London: Cape, 1968. - Drury, Ian. ‘The Zenith of Drury’s musical career, New Boots and Panties, came in
1977, when youth was being celebrated amid power chords and bondage trousers – he was 35
at the time. Lead singer of the ‘Blockheads’, television and film actor and late-night television
show presenter. Larkin, C. (1995) The Guinness Encyclopedia of Popular Music, London:
Guinness Publishing Ltd., pp. 1274–75. - Greenaway, Peter, film director, painter and writer. Films include Zandra Rhodes, 1981,
The Draughtsman’s Contract, 1982, A Zed and Two Noughts, 1985, The Belly of an Architect,
1986,Fear of Drowning, 1988,Drowning by Numbers, 1988, The Cook, The Thief, His