Wendy Dagworthy

Wendy Ann Dagworthy OBE (born 4 March 1950) is an English former fashion designer and now design academic. During her career she has led fashion design teaching at both the Royal College of Art and Central Saint Martins, mentoring notable fashion designers including Stella McCartney and Hussein Chalayan. An influential designer in her own right in the 1970s and '80s with the Wendy Dagworthy label, and one of the founders of London Fashion Week, she was described by the Daily Telegraph as: "the high priestess of British fashion".

Early life Wendy Ann Dagworthy was born in 1950 in Gravesend, Kent, the daughter of Jean A. (Stubbs) and Arthur Sidney Dagworthy. She was interested in fashion from an early age, noting that: "Sewing was something you did back then. You learnt needlework at school. There were no high-street shops where you could buy cheap clothes, so you would go to the market, buy some fabric and knock up your own". She was a pupil at Northfleet School for Girls, later attending Medway College of Art (now the University for the Creative Arts). She studied fashion at Hornsey College of Art, where her degree show attracted attention.

Design company After leaving college, Dagworthy began working with the wholesale company Radley, which then owned the brand Ossie Clark. One of Dagworthy's early personal customers was musician Bryan Ferry, who she had met through a Gravesend connection. She designed some of Roxy Music's stage costumes and also made Ferry a pair of monogrammed black silk pyjamas to wear in hospital while he was having his tonsils out. It operated initially from Dagworthy's flat and she would smuggle rolls of fabric up in the lift to avoid detection. She employed Betty Jackson as her fashion assistant as the business continued to grow, and she was also able to take on a studio in Berwick Street, Soho, a short walk from Carnaby Street. The label was also known for its use of Liberty prints. According to Dagworthy, the inspirations for her designs included menswear, workwear, ethnic clothing and the detailing found on shirts.

Company success and demise Exports proved a particularly strong market for the label, and during the early 1980s almost half of Wendy Dagworthy output went to Italy. France and the US also proved to be good markets. Two years later, she became head of its School of Fashion and Textiles and in 2011 was made head of the newly created School of Material, incorporating both fashion and textile disciplines. Among her more recent advisory roles are contributing to the 2009 Design Museum exhibition Super Contemporary – for which she contributed a personal 'map' charting the 1970s London fashion scene – and acting as expert advisor to the V&A's 1980s exhibition From Club to Catwalk (2013–14).

In January 2014, Dagworthy announced that she would be retiring from the RCA at the end of the academic year. In May 2014, the RCA held a celebratory exhibition, in tandem with its annual graduate fashion show, to mark her 16 years in the role of head of fashion.

She was featured on BBC Radio 4's Desert Island Discs programme on Sunday 2 November 2014; her chosen favourite tracks were "No Woman, No Cry" by Bob Marley and the Wailers and "La Vie En Rose" by Grace Jones, her favourite book being The Raj Quartet by Paul Scott, and her luxury item "a case of red lipstick and a fridge to keep it cool."

Personal life Wendy Dagworthy is married to the photographer Jonathan W. Prew. She is the mother-in-law of Prew's husband, actor Jeffery Self.