Jean Muir Video | Interviews

Jean Elizabeth Muir, CBE, FCSD (July 17, 1928 - May 28, 1995) was an English fashion designer (though she herself preferred to be called a dressmaker). Jean Muir was born in London, the daughter of Cyril Muir, a draper's floor superintendent, and his wife, Phyllis Coy. Her father was an Aberdonian, and Muir would attribute her creative pragmatism and self-discipline to this Scottish ancestry. Her parents separated while she was still a child, and she and her brother Christopher were brought up in Bedford by their mother. She was educated at the Bedford Girls' Modern School (now known as... MORE

Jean Elizabeth Muir, CBE, FCSD (July 17, 1928 - May 28, 1995) was an English fashion designer (though she herself preferred to be called a dressmaker). Jean Muir was born in London, the daughter of Cyril Muir, a draper's floor superintendent, and his wife, Phyllis Coy. Her father was an Aberdonian, and Muir would attribute her creative pragmatism and self-discipline to this Scottish ancestry. Her parents separated while she was still a child, and she and her brother Christopher were brought up in Bedford by their mother. She was educated at the Bedford Girls' Modern School (now known as the Dame Alice Harpur School) in Bedford. While she was academically unimpressive, she showed a precocious talent for needlework, claiming to have been able to knit, embroider, and sew by the age of six. At the age of seventeen, she left school and went to work at an electoral registration office at Bedford Town Hall. She then moved to London, where she worked briefly in a solicitor's office before taking a stockroom job at Liberty & Co in 1950. She worked her way upwards to selling over the counter, and then despite her lack of formal art college training, was given the opportunity to sketch in LESS