Wendy, Janey, Joanne and Madge

Wendy, Jane, Joanne and Madge tells the story of the four charismatic women who led the Royal College of Art’s School of Fashion for nearly seventy years. Madge Garland, Janey Ironside, Joanne Brogden, and Wendy Dagworthy, a quartet of remarkable educators and doyennes of style and skill, helped establish a global reputation for British design excellence in ready-to-wear clothing.

Garland, previously fashion editor of Vogue and a brave pioneer at a time when the educational establishment regarded fashion as “frippery,” laid foundations on which Ironside, the sparkling innovator, built. Brogden took the helm next, bringing the school into a more competitive commercial world as fashion became a major economic force. When Dagworthy took over in the final decade of the twentieth century, she guided her students into a new era while still respecting the inheritance of her predecessors.

With more than one hundred black-and-white and color images, including many previously unpublished photographs, this is the first biographical study of the women who made the Royal College of Art’s School of Fashion a household name.