This July, Wendy Dagworthy will retire as Dean of the School of Material at the Royal College of Art, where she has been heading up womenswear since 1998. Before that, she was course director at Central Saint Martins, where she taught Alexander McQueen and Stella McCartney. She had her own successful fashion label in the 1970s and 1980s, and was one of the founders of the London Designer Collections, which evolved to become London Fashion Week. She has an OBE for services to the fashion industry.

In other words: what Wendy doesn't know about the world of fashion isn't worth knowing, as we discovered when we interviewed her to mark her retirement. Drawing on several decades of experience, she revealed the lessons she's learned and the advice she'd offer to anyone starting out in the fashion industry.

Wendy has been a design consultant to companies including Liberty, Laura Ashley and Betty Jackson. She started out with her own fashion label, which flourished for 16 years. Following the Black Monday crash of 1987, Wendy lost crucial business from America and Italy and was forced to go into liquidation. A month later, she was offered a role at Central Saint Martins.

For decades, Wendy has guided and coaxed fashion and art students through what can be one of the most exhilarating and stressful periods of their lives. 'They can get very distraught, especially at this time of year,' she says. 'Things don’t quite go right. You learn to help them because you’ve had to deal with it yourself.' Some of her students have gone on to huge success – not only McQueen and McCartney, but Erdem, Hussein Chalayan and Giles Deacon. Watching hundreds of careers unfold, she's learnt the value of staying focused, whatever life throws at you.

Show RCA Fashion 2014, Wendy's last Royal College of Art show as Dean of the School of Material, takes place in London on 28 May at 4pm and 7pm. Book tickets at rca.ac.uk/fashionticket or call 0207 590 4373.

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