When Clarissa returned to London she enrolled at the Slade School of Fine Art. Around this time she displayed her individualism by acquiring a specially tailored trouser suit along the lines of those associated with the actress Marlene Dietrich after the latter's appearance in the film, "Morocco" (1930). 1938 was the future Lady Avon's "coming out" year and she was regarded as "one of the more notable débutantes" in a "vintage year for beautiful girls", but, having mixed with older and more sophisticated people in Paris, she seems to have disdained the circuit—since described by Anne de Courcy as "more or less naive seventeen- and eighteen-year-olds suddenly flung into a round of gaities"—and was never presented at Court. Another débutante of 1938, Deborah Mitford, later Duchess of Devonshire, recalled Clarissa Spencer-Churchill as exhibiting "more than a whiff of Garbo in a dress by Maggy Rouff of Paris".