[3] The daughter of Thomas Henry Pemberton, who was a skilled amateur painter as well as a photographic innovator, inventing a one-camera stereoscopic process.
Her mother, Alice Pemberton, née Smith, retired from a career as a professional singer upon marriage and she was also a gifted designer and needlewoman.
[1] Pemberton persuaded the head of the school of design, Professor Ernest William Tristram, to introduce such a course, and he asked her to draft the curriculum.
According to the ODNB, She proposed a combination of direct contact, sketching, and analysing with an actual couturier, learning the basic skills of cutting and sewing with a professional, and supplementing this with academic studies in the history of fashion and design at museums such as the Victoria and Albert.
[3] Even before the war, Pemberton's innovative approach to teaching fashion and giving it a proper place in the art college curriculum had attracted international attention.