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; to these, furriery and men's tailoring were later added.

[4] After the Second World War the minimum school leaving age was 15; junior level courses at the colleges were scrapped.

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.

[10] Until 2023, when it moved to new premises in Stratford, the main building was in John Prince's Street, just north of Oxford Circus, with other campuses at 272 High Holborn, 40 Lime Grove in Shepherd's Bush, and – in east London – 182 Mare Street, 100 Curtain Road and Golden Lane.

[11] The new building, at 105 Carpenters Road in the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park in Stratford, was purpose-built to designs by Allies and Morrison, which were intended to reflect nineteenth-century mill buildings.