London College of Fashion History

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The Company Description of Its Time

The London College of Fashion is this letter's education filing, and its own statement of purpose comes first in the historical record: fashion can change lives; through teaching, specialist research and collaborative work, they empower their students to think differently, using fashion to examine the past, build a sustainable future and improve the way we live. The college is a constituent college of the University of the Arts London, in London, England, offering undergraduate, postgraduate, short courses, study abroad courses and business training in fashion, make-up, beauty-therapy and lifestyle industries. It is, the filing states, the only college in Britain to specialise in fashion education, research and consultancy - a specialisation claim as definite as any manufacturer's on these pages.

Three Trade Schools for Women

The origins lie in three early London trade schools for women: the Shoreditch Technical Institute Girls School, founded in 1906; the Barrett Street Trade School, founded in 1915; and the Clapham Trade School, founded in 1927. All were set up by the technical education board of the London County Council to train skilled labour for trades including dressmaking, millinery, embroidery, women's tailoring and hairdressing, with furriery and men's tailoring later added. Graduates of the schools found work either in the garment factories of the East End, or in the skilled dressmaking and fashion shops of the West End of London - the schools feeding both ends of the city's clothing economy, the factory floor and the couture workroom, from the same classrooms.

The mergers that made the modern college are dated step by step. Barrett Street Trade School became Barrett Street Technical College, and the Shoreditch and Clapham schools were merged to form Shoreditch College for the Garment Trades; both had the status of technical colleges and began to take male students also. In 1967 the two colleges were merged to form the London College for the Garment Trades, and this was renamed London College of Fashion in 1974 - the name change marking the shift from garment trades, the language of manufacture, to fashion, the language of design and culture, that the college's own purpose statement now speaks.

Cordwainers Joins the College

The last merger in the filing brings in footwear's own school. In August 2000 Cordwainers College, a specialist school for leather-working, shoemaking and saddlery, was merged with the London College of Fashion. Cordwainers' own history is kept inside this profile: founded in Bethnal Green in 1887 as the Leather Trade School, its name changed to Cordwainers Technical College in about 1914, and then to Cordwainers College in 1991. A leather trade school older than any of the garment schools thus sits inside the fashion college - which is why a shoemaking tradition appears in this filing's family tree, and why the college's specialisation spans the dressed body from millinery to shoes.

Use this page for the filed facts: the purpose statement and UAL constituent status, the only-college-in-Britain specialisation claim, the over-60 degrees and 165 short courses, the three founding trade schools with their dates and trades, the graduate destinations in East End factories and West End shops, the 1967 merger and 1974 renaming, and the August 2000 Cordwainers merger with its 1887 origin. The routes are the education routes - fashion schools, schools by location and fashion schools in the United Kingdom - and for current courses and admissions the official London College of Fashion page at the University of the Arts London, in the References, is the authority.

← Back to the current London College of Fashion profile