In 2010, during an interview with Vidal Sassoon, the hairstylist mentioned Mary Quant being featured in Craig Teper's Vidal Sassoon The Movie. Sassoon remembered then that, rather than reminiscing, on set the iconic British fashion designer and retailer, who was also one of his muses, talked about the future, "because that's what we've always been," he highlighted, "visionaries projected into the future".
Quant, who in the '60s revolutionised women's style and also launched a pioneering retail plan, died today at her home in Surrey, as announced by her family; she was 93.
Born in 1930 and brought up in Blackheath, London, Quant was the daughter of two Welsh schoolteachers. She studied illustration at Goldsmiths, graduating in 1953 with a diploma in art education, and began her apprenticeship at a high-end milliner, Erik of Brook Street.
In 1955 with her husband, the aristocrat Alexander Plunket Greene, and their friend, lawyer-turned-photographer Archie McNair, she opened a restaurant (Alexander's) in the basement of a building in London's King's Road, Chelsea, with a boutique called Bazaar on the ground floor.
While Plunket Greene managed the property, McNair oversaw legal matters and Quant concentrated on design. At the beginning, she stocked the shop with garments bought from wholesale retailers, but felt frustrated by what was available at the time on the market. So, after attending pattern cutting classes and building on the success of a first design, a pair of lounge pyjamas created for the opening of the boutique, she started selling in store her own creations.
In the early days the production was slow and rather limited: the sales at the boutique allowed her to buy the fabric she needed to make new stock that would then go on sale at the boutique. This guaranteed a constant run of new and trendy designs that appealed the boutique's young consumers.
Quant favoured functional pieces that echoed children's clothes, and were ideal for everyday life, practical outfits such as short tunic dresses matched with brightly coloured tights. She also invented hot pants and took motifs and elements from well-known garments such as Norfolk jackets, tab-collared shirts and Liberty bodices and reinvented them, and came up with men's cardigans long enough to wear as dresses.
Bazaar represented a breath of fresh air and an entirely new concept in retail: it was indeed among the few places in the '50s and early '60s that offered alternative styles in a scene that mainly featured couturiers and department stores and, retail-wise, it represented a step into the future. Quant created indeed in the shop a sort of immersive experience with music, drinks, fun windows displays and extended opening hours. Besides, the designer launched a branded identity, adopting the daisy motif as her signature logo.
By 1957 demand for her clothes pushed Quant to open a second store in a space designed by Terence Conran (the professional connection between these two figures is currently being explored at New York's The Museum at FIT's exhibition "Designing Women: Fashion Creators and Their Interiors", on until May 14, 2023).
A year later, Quant launched the miniskirt: while some claim that it was French couturier André Courrèges that invented it in 1964, Quant certainly championed the garment that was then popularized by stick-thin model Twiggy (Quant's designs weren't friendly with curvy silhouettes).
Quant's feel-good designs for women - her mini-skirts, coloured textured tights, skinny rib sweaters (inspired by trying on an eight-year-old's sweater for fun) and low heels - liberated women from constricting girdles creating a contrast between more conservative styles and new looks, characterized by playful patterns and humorous twists.
The short skirts with a name that evoked the Mini Cooper broke away from the conventional norms of the past and became a symbol of the changing role of women in society: they allowed mobility and granted women the freedom to run for a bus, dance, have fun and be in control of their lives. Her accomplishments, though, also represented a personal rebellion, since her parents had opposed her desire to study fashion.
In the '60s Quant also experimented with new materials, such as Crimplene, acrylic wool, acetate, and PVC, using the latter for clothes and for her iconic weatherproof boots, from her Quant Afoot footwear range.
Made from clear plastic over a coloured lining, they resembled Chelsea boots with square heels and toes and the heels were moulded with Mary Quant's signature daisy motif so that the wearer would leave a trail of daisy footprints behind her after walking through a puddle - a typical ironic and fun Quant twist.
More lines followed, including underwear, costume jewelry, cosmetics (still operating), interior designs and a Daisy toy doll range, plus a design contract with American department-store chain JC Penney. In 1965, together with other fashion designers like Foale and Tuffin, Quant went on the British "Youthquake" tours to the US arranged by the Puritan Fashion Corporation and JC Penney in New York.
Part of the success of the brand was due to the fact that its founder modeled her own designs extensively, taking inspiration from fashion icons such as Coco Chanel and Elsa Schiaparelli who had done the same before her.
She was also the perfect muse for other key figures of the Swinging London scene such as Vidal Sassoon: one of the most iconic images from the '60s, shows indeed Quant, having her hair cut by Sassoon in a geometrically perfect architectural bob.
In her autobiography she wrote about him: "Vidal Sassoon liberated women from the punishment of hours spent under the bonnet of a hairdryer, with fat rollers skewered to their scalps, while being par-boiled (…) Vidal Sassoon, the Pill and the mini-skirt changed everything. For me, Vidal Sassoon produced the perfect cap on my leggy mini-skirted designs and the frame for my Colour Cosmetics."
In 1966, Quant was awarded an OBE and the following year, she opened her third shop, in London's New Bond Street. During the '60s she also contributed with her designs to iconic films.
Quant provided wardrobes and costumes for Claire Bloom in Robert Wise's The Haunting (1963), Cilla Black and Julie Samuels in Jeremy Summers' Ferry Cross the Mersey (1964), Charlotte Rampling in Silvio Narizzano's Georgy Girl (1966), Nancy Kwan in John Krish's The Wild Affair (1965) and Audrey Hepburn in Stanley Donen's Two for the Road (1967).
The next decade wad marked by more successes and an exhibition as well at the London Museum (Kensington Palace), from November 1973 to June 1974.
After her first autobiography in 1966, Quant by Quant, she went on to publish further books - Colour (1984), Quant on Make-up (1986), Classic Make up & Beauty Book (1996) and, in 2011, her second autobiography, Mary Quant.
She resigned as director of Mary Quant Ltd. in 2000 following a takeover by a Japanese group and in 2009 Quant's "banana split" dress was featured in the Royal Mail stamp series part of a celebration of Great British design (that also included the Mini Cooper).
Quant often appeared in documentaries about the Swinging London, including Craig Teper's Vidal Sassoon The Movie and David Batty's My Generation, and, in 2021, Sadie Frost shot a documentary about her, Quant.
Quant was the subject of a retrospective at the Victoria and Albert (V&A) Museum in 2019 that explored her work between 1955 and 1975 and looked at the designer in the context of the #MeToo movement and the new momentum behind women's rights.
In 2018, the V&A staff launched a #WeWantQuant campaign, appealing to the public for clothes they might be willing to loan or donate for the event. They received over a thousand emails from women who still cherished and preserved Quant's designs, a testament to her revolutionary approach and of her infectious energy that had allowed Quant to elevate the lives of women through her bold, irreverent, and disruptive aesthetics.
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