Lucie Clayton College was founded by Sylvia Lucie Golledge in 1928 as a finishing school which expanded into modelling two years later and turned into Britain's top modelling agency during the 1950s and 1960s by Leslie Kark who bought the business. His wife Evelyn became the figurehead and public face as Lucie Clayton. In the late 1960s, Lucie Clayton added secretarial training to its curriculum which already consisted of cookery, flower arranging, make-up, deportment, fashion design, pattern cutting, dressmaking and style of dress.