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Fashion Design

1961 (designed)
Artist/Maker
Place of origin

Jane Elizabeth Green trained as a fashion designer at the London College of Fashion in 1957-58 and at the Royal College of Art from 1958 to 1961. In her graduating year she was given the Frederick Starke Travelling Award for the best designer of wholesale fashion, which enabled her to travel to New York and Florence. Despite the premium attached to couture design, Green always wanted to design for the high street; her clothes were put into production by the fashion designer and promoter Frederick Starke and she produced designs for the Wallis chain. She went into teaching and was a lecturer in fashion and textiles at Hornsey and Nottingham College of Art from 1963 to 1966. Thereafter she departed from her design career, undertook secretarial work and trained as a lawyer; she was called to the Bar by the Inner Temple in 1993.

Green’s student work from the late 1950s and early 1960s is of interest as evidence of fashion design education at the RCA. There is great emphasis on formal wear and on highly structured designs that required good cutting skills. Green’s design style is fresh and dynamic and the drawings are of high quality, often annotated with notes about materials and the ‘scenario’ of the design exercise, for example, ‘Informal alfresco lunch with President and English and French ambassadors and their wives in White House Garden’.


Object details

Categories
Object type
Materials and techniques
Pen, pencil and watercolour drawing on paper
Brief description
Fashion design for a pink linen dress by Jane Elizabeth Green, pencil, pen and watercolour on paper, England, 1961
Physical description
Design for a sleeveless, above the knee length, pink linen dress shown from the front and the back. The dress is formed of a loose back bodice panel held to the front panel by large round buttons. The skirt is slit at the centre front to form a loose front skirt panel which is held in place by a belt decorated with two large round pink buttons.
Dimensions
  • Height: 31.2cm
  • Width: 20.3cm
Marks and inscriptions
  • '3 1/2 yds ordered / 2 5/8 yds sent / & cut' (Inscribed in pencil; bottom right corner)
  • '966' (Inscribed in pencil; bottom left corner)
  • 'linen dress: / loose front skirt and, / loose back bodice panel / skirt slit at centre front / under panel' (Inscribed in ink; bottom left)
  • 'Style / 162 / 616 /' (Inscribed in blue ink; top right corner)
Credit line
Given by Jane Elizabeth Green
Subject depicted
Summary
Jane Elizabeth Green trained as a fashion designer at the London College of Fashion in 1957-58 and at the Royal College of Art from 1958 to 1961. In her graduating year she was given the Frederick Starke Travelling Award for the best designer of wholesale fashion, which enabled her to travel to New York and Florence. Despite the premium attached to couture design, Green always wanted to design for the high street; her clothes were put into production by the fashion designer and promoter Frederick Starke and she produced designs for the Wallis chain. She went into teaching and was a lecturer in fashion and textiles at Hornsey and Nottingham College of Art from 1963 to 1966. Thereafter she departed from her design career, undertook secretarial work and trained as a lawyer; she was called to the Bar by the Inner Temple in 1993.

Green’s student work from the late 1950s and early 1960s is of interest as evidence of fashion design education at the RCA. There is great emphasis on formal wear and on highly structured designs that required good cutting skills. Green’s design style is fresh and dynamic and the drawings are of high quality, often annotated with notes about materials and the ‘scenario’ of the design exercise, for example, ‘Informal alfresco lunch with President and English and French ambassadors and their wives in White House Garden’.
Collection
Accession number
E.412-2015

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Record createdMay 21, 2015
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