April 13, 2023 |
British fashion revolutionary, Dame Mary Quant has passed away, aged 93. It was announced this afternoon in a statement from her family to the PA news agency, who reported that she “died peacefully at home in Surrey, UK this morning”.
Her family said she was “one of the most internationally recognised fashion designers of the 20th Century and an outstanding innovator. She opened her first shop Bazaar in the Kings Road in 1955 and her far-sighted and creative talents quickly established a unique contribution to British fashion.”
Lauded as the mini-skirt savant of the swinging sixties, she was best known for shortening hemlines and making the mini skirt the ‘It’ item for a new generation of young women.
Born in south-east London on Feb 11, 1930, Quant was raised by two Welsh school teachers. She obtained a diploma in art education at Goldsmiths College in the 1950s, where she met her late husband Alexander Plunket Greene, who would later assist the designer in establishing her eponymous brand. Quant was then taken on as an apprentice to the milliner Erik of Brook Street, before going it alone and opening her Kings Road boutique Bazaar with Greene in 1955. With innovation and disruption ripe in her DNA, she disrupted the conventions of contemporary retail with a constant replenishment of stock at the Chelsea store.
A true trailblazer, during the 1960s Quant became a poster girl for London’s Youthquake at the vanguard of the ‘60s shift in fashion. With her iconic Vidal Sassoon haircut she was frequently photographed and was almost always wearing a mini – including the evening when she received her OBE in 1966.
Quant made fashion accessible to the masses with her sleek, streamlined and effervescent designs that took inspiration from subcultures such as the mods and traditional school uniforms. Hotpants, onesies, patterned tights and PVC raincoats can also be traced back to her work. Mary Quant Cosmetics, launched in 1966, and remains in existence to this day.
More recently, the pioneering designer was celebrated in a retrospective exhibition at the V&A in 2019 that has since toured Australia, New Zealand, Taiwan and Japan. This was followed in 2021 by a documentary directed by Sadie Frost, dubbed Quant. Documenting the first 20 years of her career from 1955 to 1975, the exhibition, Mary Quant: Fashion Revolutionary, will open in Glasgow’s Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum next month from May 20.
Mary Quant is survived by her son Orlando, three grandchildren and her brother, Tony Quant.
