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.
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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.
The modelling agency closed in the late 1970s but the school went on preparing young ladies for marriage, society and The Season.
In the early 1990s, Lucie Clayton reinvented itself as a successful secretarial and business college. The courses themselves range from a few days up to a full year, are pitched at a number of levels and may include anything from shorthand to IT to budgeting, marketing, public relations, law and personal development. Along the way, students may pick up the odd City & Guilds or London Chamber of Commerce & Industry professional qualification, but at the end of the course they will leave with Lucie Clayton's very own certificate. The list of employers associated with the college reads like a Who's Who of London's corporate beau monde, with the likes of Amanda Wakeley, Arthur Andersen, Hermes, JWT, the BBC, Vogue, and Schroders.
In 2007, Lucie Clayton College merged with two secretarial colleges to form Quest Business Training, known today as Quest Professional, and moved to another location nearby. Lucie Clayton House in South Kensington, London was converted into seven serviced apartments.
The etiquette side of Lucie Clayton is now handled by The English Manner.