[3][4] Later it would train further designers, with names such as Stephen Jones and John Galliano passing through the couture house as trainees on their way to successful solo careers.
[8] After five years, Morton set up his own label and he was succeeded at Lachasse by Hardy Amies, then a would-be designer and former Avery weighing machine salesman who had got the job of managing the store simply because a letter he wrote describing a dress came to the attention of Shingleton.
Cecil Beaton photographed the suit for Vogue; it had padded hips, a nipped in waist (Amies had introduced corsets to the collection) and was made in green Linton tweed with a cerise pink check.
[16] At Lachasse, the next head of design was Owen, who continued the tradition of fine tailoring that was a hallmark of the label, as seen in a red suit that now forms part of the V&A archive.
[4] Its tailored suits had some success internationally, especially after the Wall Street crash, when many American buyers looked to London rather than Paris for fashions because of its lower prices.
[23] That same year, Lachasse – along with IncSoc members and wholesale houses such as Susan Small, Aquascutum and Simpsons – showed its fashion at St Moritz as part of an export drive organised by The Ambassador magazine.
[25] A critique of the London couture houses in 1967 – in which the author contrasted their work with that of designers such as Mary Quant and Jean Muir – noted: "Lachasse's collection was so far removed from the current fashion idiom to seem almost a museum piece.
His clothes, built to the standards of elegance, taste and fit of years gone by, are obviously designed for the older woman who remembers and loves straight cut skirts, low, square necklines, draped bodices, hip bows and cuffed, bracelet-length sleeves".
[4] Couture, however, was still its main business and in 1990, Liz Smith writing in The Times described it as one of the go-to places in London for bespoke clothing: "Peter Lewis-Crown today continues the house tradition for natty tailoring (a suit costs around £1,000) that looks little changed from the days when Princess Marina and the late Countess Mountbatten were customers".
[4] Among the items at the Fashion Museum, Bath is the Virginia Lachasse doll, a miniature mannequin created in 1954 for a London exhibition and equipped with an entire couture wardrobe, from daywear to bags, nylons and cigarettes.