As a Norland College graduate, Ashford had always worn her Norland uniform through every job until a day when she went with one of her charges, baby Pippa, to a National Health Services baby clinic after the war. "What's the good in having a Norland nanny?" a mother there asked her as they both sat in the waiting room. "They don't work – they don't like to get their hands or their uniform dirty. I mean to say, it's ridiculous. Who needs a nanny in a cape?" When Ashford got back to the house, she took off the uniform. "I am sure [Norland principal] Mrs. Whitehead would have had a blue fit," she wrote. "But the world had changed so much since 1939. As we entered the 1950s a nanny in a uniform seemed strangely outdated. Society was changing, and I had to be seen changing with it."
