Janey Ironside

Janey Ironside (1919 - 6 April 1979) was professor of fashion at London's Royal College of Art, a position she held from 1956 to 1968. She was a key figure in enabling fashion to be accepted as a valid academic subject in Britain. Described by her daughter Virginia as a "style icon", she died aged 60 after several suicide attempts and having suffered medical complications caused by alcoholism.

Janey Ironside was born Janey Acheson. Her father was an important figure in the Indian Civil Service. She was sent to school in Winchester, England. This was followed by courses in dress making at the Central School of Arts & Crafts in London in the 1930s.

During World War Two, Ironside lived in Leamington Spa and would visit evacuees recovering in a nearby convalescent home. She produced over forty pencil and watercolour studies of the children in the home and a number of these works were presented to the Imperial War Museum in 1981. According to her daughter, after her marriage to Christopher Ironside in 1939, Ironside "set up as a designer and seamstress at their home in South Kensington. We had ten cheerful foreign girls working at the top of our house, in sweat-shop conditions. Machines whirred all day, and each girl sported her national flag on the table beside her workbench." She advertised her services as a "designer dressmaker" in Vogue and her customers included debutants and fashion editors. Her work was mainly made-to-order evening wear and wedding dresses, but by 1952 she had designed a full collection for a large retailer.

In 1949, Ironside taught at the private Fashion School in Ennismore Gardens, Kensington, next to the Royal College of Art.

Ironside's personal style was based on Christian Dior's maxim that "to please a man, or to stop a show, use black, white and scarlet." She wore mainly dark colours with red lipstick, which set off her pale skin and dark hair. Her daughter said: "She only ever wore black, white or scarlet, and even at home in casual clothes, she always had a certain élan." Her fashions were influenced by Paris and Dior's New Look but on the cheap using the materials she could find. Due to post World War II rationing she bought material intended for blackout curtains to make outfits. In 1956 she told a Daily Mail journalist that she wanted "to try and promote an internationally accepted new English look".

...
Wikipedia