The Fashion BusinessMy main recollection of the two-year period at the Royal College of Art
from 1963 to 1965 is one of working extremely hard. Once again, I found
myself amongst formidable colleagues, this time Ossie Clarke,^10 Zandra
Rhodes^11 and Bill Gibb.^12 Walthamshow had taught me how to draw, and
had shaped my appreciation of things creative whilst the Royal College devel-
oped a competitive edge, an ability to deal with the highs and lows of life in
fashion. Something about being a student in the Royal College of Art fashion
school under the headship of Janey Ironside made one incredibly tough. Then,
as now, a great deal of the projects of which the course was comprised, were
actually competitions and our work was the object of a great deal of media
attention. I was successful in a swimwear project, where my bullseye swimsuit
received coverage in a large number of magazines, and in a second-year project
where my 1940s inspired coat was featured on the front page of the Evening
Standard. During the first year, Ernestine Carter^13 had sketched one of my
garments for the Sunday Times, which caused great consternation amongst
second- and third-year students, but I was not always so successful. I can still
recall my feelings when, after working for weeks on a garment for a competi-
tion, Ossie Clarke arrived the evening before the deadline, cut out a dress
and made it in half an hour. It looked as if it had never been touched by
human hand.
Wife and Her Lover, 1989, Prospero’s Books, 1998, The Baby or Macon, 1993, The Pillow
Book, 1996.
- Clark, Ossie. Raymond Clark, known professionally as Ossie, studied at Manchester
School of Art from 1957 to 1961. He went to the Royal College of Art on a scholarship and
graduated in 1964. His design career began with Alice Pollock’s Quorum in the 1960s heyday
of London fashion... His clothes had everything for those heady days when the jeunesse de
vie of the Royal College seemed able to break all the rules and canons of taste, secure in the
knowledge that they would receive ever-increasing praise from the press. McDowell, C. (1984),
McDowell’s Directory of Twentieth Century Fashion, London: Muller p. 108. - Rhodes, Zandra. ‘Zandra Rhodes designs romantic and fantastic clothes which cannot
be mistaken for the work of any other designer.... Her fabrics – chiffons, silks, tulles – are
hand-printed with squiggles, zig zags and stars and float like butterfly wings. She has given us
ruffled tulle crinolines, glamorised punk, uneven hems, bubble dresses – all with the strong
Rhodes signature’. McDowell, C., (1984), McDowell’s Directory of Twentieth Century Design,
London: Muller p. 229. - Gibb, Bill. ‘Educated at the Fraserborough Academy, Gibb enrolled at St. Martins’ School
of Art in 1962 and then went on a scholarship to the Royal College of Art in 1996. He soon
became the golden boy, Fashion’s Hockney, adored by all for his talent and charm.’ McDowell,
C., (1984), McDowell’s Directory of Twentieth Century Design, London: Muller p. 147. - Ernestine Carter entered fashion via the post-war exhibition, ‘Britain Can Make It’,
which lead to her fashion editorship of Harper’s Bazaar, then Women’s Editor and Associate
Editor of the Sunday Times. She received an OBE in 1964 and published several books on
fashion including With Tongue in Chic (1974), 20th Century Fashion: A Scrapbook 1900 to
Today (1975), The Changing World of Fashion (1977) and Magic Names of Fashion (1980).