Sheilagh Brown

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.

Early life and career 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. This was a place where rock stars, including Mick Jagger hung out.

Coopers and Quorum When the Stirling Cooper partnership split, Brown moved on with Jeff Cooper and Sheridan Barnett to found Coopers, a high-fashion brand located just off Savile Row. Two years later, Brown and Barnett took over from Alice Pollock and Ossie Clark as head designers at Quorum. Brown also set up a design studio co-op for graduate designers called Queen Street Studios, which was located above Blitz Club. The article featured designs by Brown, including a wraparound coat in mohair and jodhpurs with matching top with a ruff collar made of pink moire.

Fashion lecturer and high-street ranges By 1980, Barnett and Brown had split, a casualty of the early 1980s recession. Speaking in 1983 about the business failure, Barnett said: "Even the New York orders were unreal. But we did not have the finance to produce the orders. We tried everywhere, but that was the start of the recession, that was when it was really starting to bite on the fashion industry".

Sheilagh Brown stayed on as principal lecturer in fashion at Saint Martins. The college at this time was, as she described it, a "hothouse atmosphere", with a whole raft of students who would go on to influence fashion and popular culture, including John Galliano, John Flett, Stephen Jones, Darla Jane Gilroy, Sade and Chris Sullivan.

Marks & Spencer design role In 1988, (some sources say 1990), Brown became head of womenswear design at Marks & Spencer. Writing in The Guardian, Catherine Wilson said the credit for a turnaround in M&S profits (at record levels in 1993) was with Brown, who had brought in a team of six designers and was using Betty Jackson and Paul Smith as consultants. Brown retired from the role in 2001.

Fashion influence Brown taught many of the next generation of fashion designers during her tenure at Central Saint Martins and later at the Royal College of Art, where she was made a senior fellow in 2011. At Central Saint Martins, this included names such as John Galliano and John Flett, both of whom are credited with pioneering a new form of bias-cutting. At the RCA, this included names such as the milliner Philip Treacy – Treacy mentioned her as one of his most influential teachers and said she helped him make the decision to become a milliner rather than a fashion designer.

Brown's involvement in shaping high fashion's move from elite couture into edgy styles for mass manufacturing – notably with Stirling Cooper – was profiled in an interview for the Design Museum's 2009 exhibition Super Contemporary. Her eponymous designs with Sheridan Barnett are included within the archive of the Victoria and Albert Museum.