Professor Louise Wilson, director of the MA fashion design course at Saint Martins, has died aged 52, it was reported today.

The academic was feared and loved in equal measure, having coached the likes of Alexander McQueen, Christopher Kane and Jonathan Saunders through the rigorous and highly respected graduate degree in the 22 years she worked at its helm.

Wilson, born in Cambridgeshire in 1962, studied at Saint Martins herself, and taught there briefly after she graduated, before working in Italy for Gianfranco Ferre for a time. She returned to the college as MA course director when pregnant in 1992, but left again to work in New York with Donna Karan in 1997. In 1999, she came back to the MA job and has held it ever since. She was presented with an OBE for her services to British fashion and education in 2008.

Her exacting temper and vigour were legendary among a student body that was in awe of the teacher that tore up and threw out their ideas and designs (sometimes literally) and, in doing so, turned them into some of the most successful creatives in the industry. Wilson's employment rate from the MA course was a staggering 90 per cent. Her influence extends to almost all of the major design houses across Europe, such is the standard and scope of the talent she nurtured.

'I might decry the students,' she told The Independent in 2011 when the institution moved from its Charing Cross Road to a new complex in Kings Cross, '[but] it is a privilege to be among youth.'

Wilson was at her sister's house in Scotland when she died. She is survived by partner, Timi, and one son.