| Muriel Pemberton | |
| Birth Date: | 8 September 1909 |
| Birth Place: | Tunstall, Staffordshire, England |
| Death Place: | St Leonards-on-Sea, England |
| Nationality: | British |
| Known For: | Fashion design training, painting |
Muriel Alice Pemberton RWS (8 September 1909 - 30 July 1993) was a British fashion designer, painter and academic.[1]
According to The Independent, she "invented art-school training in fashion in Britain".[2]
Muriel Alice Pemberton was born in Tunstall, Stoke-on-Trent, on 8 September 1909,[2] or 8 September 1910.[3]
The daughter of Thomas Henry Pemberton, who was a skilled amateur painter as well as a photographic innovator, inventing a one-camera stereoscopic process. Her mother, Alice Pemberton, née Smith, retired from a career as a professional singer upon marriage and she was also a gifted designer and needlewoman.[3]
At the age of fifteen, she was the youngest student at the local Burslem School of Art.[2] In 1928, she obtained a scholarship as well as a major award to attend the School of Painting at London's Royal College of Art. In 1931, she was awarded the RCA's first ever Diploma in Fashion.[2] Pemberton persuaded the head of the school of design, Professor Ernest William Tristram, to introduce such a course, and he asked her to draft the curriculum.[3]
According to the ODNB,
She proposed a combination of direct contact, sketching, and analysing with an actual couturier, learning the basic skills of cutting and sewing with a professional, and supplementing this with academic studies in the history of fashion and design at museums such as the Victoria and Albert.[3]
Following graduation in 1931, Pemberton was immediately employed to teach fashion drawing two days a week at St Martin's School of Art.[2] Over time, she was able to expand this role and became head of the UK's first Faculty of Fashion and Design.[2] The curriculum was much as she had originally proposed to Tristram.[3]
Even before the war, Pemberton's innovative approach to teaching fashion and giving it a proper place in the art college curriculum had attracted international attention. Her methods were widely copied, with teachers visiting from all over the globe to study her approach.[3]
Her students included Katharine Hamnett, Bruce Oldfield, Bill Gibb and Bjorn Lanberg.[2] [3] In 1993, John Russell Taylor published a biography of her life.[2]
In 1941, she married John Hadley Rowe (died 1975).[2]
Pemberton died at 56 Vale Road, St Leonards-on-Sea, Sussex, on 30 July 1993.[3]