She produced over forty pencil and watercolour studies of the children in the home and a number of these works were presented to the Imperial War Museum in 1981.

[4] Ironside's personal style was based on Christian Dior's maxim that "to please a man, or to stop a show, use black, white and scarlet.

[citation needed] In 1956, at Robin Darwin's urging, Ironside was appointed as the Royal College of Art's professor of fashion, a post she was to hold until 1968.

According to Elizabeth Wilson, Ironside attributed this phenomenon to a combination of British eccentricity and the Welfare State and educational grants which allowed people with talent that would once have been wasted to go to college.

[6] Angela McRobbie described Ironside, along with Muriel Pemberton, as the key figures in enabling fashion to attain academic respectability in Britain.

[4] Ironside's students included Bill Gibb, Ossie Clark, Zandra Rhodes, Moya Bowler, Janice Wainwright, Sally Tuffin and Marion Foale.

It paid tribute to her eye for colour, her skills as an educator and her "green thumb" which allowed her students to flourish, but made no mention of the later, troubled, period of her life.