“I like each garment to be a nice object,” said Janice Wainwright, early in her career as the designer of a quiet, durably successful, fashion label. She shared with other young British designers of the late 1960s and 70s a taste for clothes that were near-craftworks, which pleased the eye just hung on a rail, and satisfied even inside out because of thoughtful construction and finish. Hers photographed well, but lived better, especially her discreet not-quite-suits in crepe with artwork details, which are now collected to be worn rather than as period pieces.
Wainwright, who has died aged 82, had a vocation for the clothes themselves and the processes of their making. At 20, she had won a place on Janey Ironside’s revolutionary course at the Royal College of Art in London. Before becoming professor of fashion, Ironside had been a skilled, imaginative dressmaker, and she taught students (including Ossie Clark, Bill Gibb and Zandra Rhodes) that fashion should be more than a transient look transmitted through images: clothes could be physical pleasures, and should serve their wearer’s identity, not subsume it.
