After a six-month spell completing his fashion industry education at Linton tweed mill in Carlisle – a key supplier to couturiers, notably Coco Chanel – he returned to work at the family firm in Paris in 1933.

[9] He was already considered notable enough in the United States to be chosen – alongside names such as Elsa Schiaparelli and Jeanne Lanvin – to design clothes for Frances Drake in the 1936 film version of I'd Give My Life.

[15] His 1947 collection – produced in a year when rationing was still in force in Britain – was greeted enthusiastically by a reviewer for Melbourne newspaper The Age, who described wool and jersey dresses with coordinating coats and box jackets, plus tailored suits in striped tweeds and black barathea worn with brightly coloured blouses.

Three years later, Creed's place among the British couture establishment was cemented by the inclusion of one of his suits in a fashion show sequence in the film Maytime in Mayfair – all the designers were IncSoc members.

[13] The premises was masculine in tone, with dark panelling on the walls and displays of Napoleonic toy soldiers (Creed had a fine collection that was later to be the subject of a British Pathé film).

[19] Several years before his death, Creed had established a wholesale fashion house specialising in knitwear and planned to focus on this after the closure of his couture business in 1966.