Marian Clayden

Clayden was born into a family of artists and craftspeople near Preston in the North of England and trained to be an oil painter.^[2] Both her grandfathers were silversmiths who died young due to respiratory issues associated with silver work.^[6]

She worked as a primary teacher in the UK before moving to Australia with her young family.^[1][2] She was always interested in fashion and began experimenting with dyes and cloth in 1964.^[3] She made wall hangings in Australia before moving again to the USA in 1967 and founding her fashion house Clayden, inc. in Los Gatos, California.^[5] where she experienced a "spiritual freedom" that enabled her to "create work that combines the present and the past into a continuum".^[3] Her first fashion collection was in 1981^[3] though her work was shown internationally since 1970.^[3] She said later that there was no specific moment when she became a fashion designer.^[3] Her innovative 'toaster prints' introduced in the mid 1980s were created using a sandwich toaster.^[7]

In 1987, with her clothing carried by luxury boutiques including Obiko in San Francisco and Bergdorf Goodman in New York, Clayden, inc. surpassed $1 million in sales.^[8] A year later, in 1988, that had doubled with the company projecting sales of $2 million.^[9]

With a long term interest in Japanese textiles her work was included in an exhibition about the American interpretation of the Shibori technique^[3] which she also employed designing costumes for the Broadway musical Hair after she was contacted by the set designer Nancy Potts.^[10][5] Most of her clothes design used some form of simplified shibori.^[5] Clayden used the South East Asian word “plangi” to describe her tie-dying and dipping technique.^[10]

In 1995, a year after suffering a brain aneurysm, Clayden won the Golden Shears Award for Fashion.^[5]

Clayden, inc. closed in 2005.^[10] Clayden died on 15 September 2015 after a period of illness at the age of 78.^[10]