Sheilagh Brown

Sheilagh Brown
Born	Kent
Occupation	Fashion designer; fashion academic
Notable credit(s)	Fellow of the Royal College of Art

Sheilagh Brown is a British fashion designer who began her career in the 1960s, as part of the Swinging London scene. She was among the designers for Stirling Cooper, working subsequently at Coopers and Quorum, before establishing the label Barnett and Brown with Sheridan Barnett.

She continued to design under her own name, both high-end fashion and for the high-street, as part of a collaboration with Jeffrey Rogers. At the end of the 1980s, Brown became head of womenswear design at Marks & Spencer. She remained in this role for more than a decade.

She also worked as a fashion academic, first at Central Saint Martins and later at the Royal College of Art, where she was appointed a senior fellow in 2011.

Sheilagh Brown was born in Kent and her father was a photographer for the Natural History Museum. She had her first foray into fashion working in a shoe shop in Rayners Lane. She attended Harrow Art School where, as she recalled in an interview for Very magazine, she learned many skills including running up a frock in a couple of hours to wear for the evening's clubbing in Soho. She knew the young Malcolm McLaren – then Malcolm Edwards – as well as Ronnie Wood. From art school, Brown won a place at the Royal College of Art – hers was one of 12 places on the course; her peer group included Bill Gibb and her tutors included Janey Ironside. While still a student, Brown earned money creating fashion drawings for national publications, including The Times, The Observer, Petticoat and 19. One of the perks of this job, as described by Brown in Very magazine, was that the clothes would arrive on a Friday night and Brown and her friends would wear them to a party before she stayed up all night to sketch and then return them.

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