Designer Diana Crawshaw

"A new idea only lasts a short while before you replace it with another.  Ideas are like meteors.  They fly through the sky in flames, then die when the fire is all spent." [1]

Yorkshire girl Diana was brought on board the Dollyrockers label at a very young age after studying at Ilkley Grammar School and Leeds College of Art.  Samuel Sherman was certain with this label that "Fashion for young people can only be designed by young people." and was such an excellent supporter and true friend to his new young designers.  [2]

"I came to London in the winter of 1963, the big freeze, after being at Leeds College of Art studying art and fashion.  I couldn't wait to get away from the narrow suburban life of Ilkley where everybody knew you.  The Beatles had just hit and the fashions were exciting and new... I wanted to disappear into this world of music and pop stars, irreverent humour and satire... When I came to London I hadn't got a job or anything and I walked into a place in Hanover Square which was called Sambo Fashions... so they took me on, and they had just started a new range called Dollyrocker.  It was a new range for young people, and they were about £5 or £6 a dress.  And they just had very little collars, a little bow at the neck or a little rose and girls were wearing those to go to the clubs in.  It was like a little dress you could dance in, and Pattie Boyd happened to be their face, George Harrison's lady.  She was just cheeky looking, she had hair in bunches and a fringe and big wide eyes, and she was the face of Dollyrocker.  And that was quite strange really because she rocketed Dollyrocker into the public eye much more because she'd just started going out with George Harrison, and so she was seen in lots of the press.  It was very good for the people that I worked for to have her as the face of Dollyrockers." [3]

"You saw people going past the main door of where I was working.  You'd see Sean Connery or somebody walking past, I'd never seen all these faces.  Vogue House was across the square and so you got people like Jean Shrimpton coming past.  So you were sort of people watching and it was interesting for me to see... the boss gave me some money as a sort of expense account and said you've got to go and watch people and so he gave me money to go to clubs.  We saw what people were wearing and picked up the new dances.  He and his wife sort of saw something in me because I was always very honest, I didn't try to say what they wanted me to say, and I had this Yorkshire accent and it amused them.  His wife said 'now come on my dear, I'm going to send you to my hairdresser Rene and get this long hair cut, and so she had it cut in the fashionable bob, the short bouncy hair.  And Sam bought me a wonderful black double breasted PVC jacket I wore with these high boots.  I started to look a bit more like the people I was watching... And then they sent me to San Tropez which I'm not sure was a good idea... I unwittingly booked into the only gay hotel in San Tropez and the guys there looked after me like their little sister." [3]

During her time at Dollyrockers Diana was one of the designers who had them introducing the prairie dress a year before Gunne Sax was even founded.  "Rosanna Hinton, 21, and Diana Crawshaw, 23, are the backroom girls who design the look.  With their long hair and short skirts they are real Dollyrockers themselves.  They KNOW what the 16-22-yer-old brigade want - all over Britain too - not just in London.  They loved the idea of Dollyrockers going WEST Country and Western in fact.[2]

Despite the excellent care she received working for Samuel Sherman it wasn't quite as exciting a job as she had hoped.  "He was wonderful because he'd say 'come and talk to your old dad' and he was like a dad to me.  He had a bit of a stammer and he'd say 'now I know you want to do much more exciting designs but what we want now is some very commercial ideas for the Selfridges and the John Lewis's, all the big stores that they sold to.  They sold Dollyrockers in the thousands, so they didn't really want too much of a rebel in there.  They were trying to get me to design things that their buyers would buy." [3]

Her time with Samuel Sherman eventually came to an end due to the influence of a new flatmate.  "I really wanted to do something a bit more exciting.  I moved into a flat with three boys at 8 Ladbroke Grove and two of them were at Art College with me and the other one of them was an ex public school boy, very intelligent and he said you need to find yourself.  He persuaded me to leave the job and hitchhike to Nepal with him.   So I had to go and tell the news to Sam Sherman... he said 'what do you mean dear find yourself...  listen, I'll ask you one more time to stay, do you need more money, do you need me to give you a raise... alright, go but when you come back which you will, come and see your old dad and I'll give you some sort of help." [3]

They never got to Nepal hitchhiking due to the new boyfriend becoming ill when they reached Rhodes.  So they set off back home via Italy.

"I came back to sanity and Sam said 'well you're going to need some money while you decide what to do, your job's here for you... I will give you some money to keep yourself so you can pay your rent and things like that.'  He wasn't like a lot of these rag trade bosses who were all for getting you into bed and stuff, he was just like a good father to me.  And so I didn't go back and work for him because I got offered a very very good job with lots of money with another company.  The person who offered me lots of money to work for them was actually a little bit free with their hands and I realised there was more to it than just working and designing dresses for him, so I left." [3]

Her next job was as a shop girl at I Was Lord Kitchener's Valet which really got her into the mindset of reworking vintage fashions, [3].  This was closely followed by a job designing for neighbouring King's Road boutique Mr Freedom when their original designer walked out, [3] then it's replacement Paradise Garage which sold a mixture of second hand and new designs.  "I feel more at home in old things, and it's the kind of freeing I try to capture in the clothes I design." [4]  The style of clothing she made there for Trevor Myles was as far from the British romantic Dollyrockers as you could get.  "I was designing things like tight-skirted rock'n'roll dresses, Chinese print Suzy Wong style dresses, and Tahitian print tops knotted on one shoulder." [1]

Her own label finally came in 1973 and went by the name Diana Meteor Productions.  Partly based on her view of ideas flying past like meteors and partly because "I just like picking up the phone and saying: 'Dyin' a meet ya!" [1]  The style was reminiscent of the Wild West influenced range she had designed for Dollyrockers back in 1966. [2]

"I'm lucky enough to have found two partners who believe in me.  Admittedly when I was working for somebody else I felt slightly more irresponsible.  Now I'm on my own I have to think a little more practically.  At the moment we're busy producing a range of Western style clothes which isn't all denim and diamante studs.  I want to extend the Western joke into a few more other wearable concepts, other than jeans, jackets and shirts.  The clothes exploit the fantasy of Jane Russell on a day off down the ranch.  Everybody has their own fantasies.  I'm just giving the wardrobe for a few of my own which I think some girls will want to share." [1]

At the end of the decade she was back designing clothes reminiscent of her Paradise Garage days for Secret Ingredient, knotted shirts and oriental influenced day pyjamas. [5]  This time they were about to be more accepted into the new anything goes punk influenced mainstream.  By the early 80s she was selling rubber dresses alongside Vivienne Westwood on the Kings Road but tailoring them to the rich and trendy in cocktail dress styles with a more breathable cotton polyurethane.  [6]

In the modern day Diana works in her new career as a celebrity palmist back on the King's Road.  [3]

[1] Snow, R. (1973) 'Diana's joke is no laugh', London Evening News, 22 February, p. 13.

[2] McSharry, D. (1966) 'It takes the young to catch the young', Daily Express, 16 March, p. 6.

[3] Coates, S. 2021. 'Ms Freedom: From Counterculture to Counter-couture'. Bureau of Lost Culture [Podcast]. Available at: https://bureauoflostculture.podbean.com/e/ms-freedom-from-paradise-garage-to-palm-reading/ (Accessed: 26 April 2026). 

[4] Daily Express (1971) 'Trendy Diana, capturing the cast-off look...', Daily Express, 15 May, p. 3.

[5] Modlinger, J. (1979) 'Full of Western Promise but inspired by the East', Daily Express, 17 December, p. 19.

[6] Gould, J, (1985) 'Polish up your style', Sunday Mirror, 9 June, p. 23.