Norah Waugh

Norah Waugh was born in Northern Ireland and was educated in Belfast and Dublin. After a general art course at the Belfast School of Art she came to London and joined the L.C.C. Central School of Arts and Crafts, specialising in the history of costume. Her training finished, she stayed on as assistant to Jeannetta Cochrane, Head of the Costume Department. When war broke out she was also lecturing and doing practical costume work at the London Theatre Studio run by Michel Saint Denis. Previous to that she had a successful business for theatrical costume but preferred teaching, which gave her more leisure for research and travel. During the war she joined the Ministry of Information and went to Moscow to work in the press department of the British Embassy. After the war she returned to the Central School of Arts and Crafts. She wrote three books: Corsets & Crinolines (1954), The Cut of Men's Clothes (1964) and The Cut of Women's Clothes (finished by Margaret Woodward and published in 1968 after Norah Waugh's death)