Mary Quant dies: Visionary fashion designer who styled ’60s swinging and popularized miniskirts at 93
London — Mary Quant, the visionary fashion designer whose colorful, sexy miniskirts defined 1960s London and influenced youth culture around the world, has died. She was 93 years old.
Quant’s family said he died “peacefully at home” in Surrey, in the south of England, on Thursday.
Quant, who is credited with inventing the miniskirt by some, helped popularize it and popularized innovative tights and accessories that are an integral part of the look. I created dresses with elements and other simple mix-and-match garments.
Some have compared her influence on the fashion world to the Beatles’ influence on pop music.
“I think it was a happy confluence of events, which fashion really does well,” said Hamish Bowles, international editor of American Vogue magazine. The right person with the right sensibility, she came onto the scene in the very height of the 60s.”
Kwant was also a shrewd businesswoman and one of the first to see how branding herself as a creative force could help her keep her business going and expand into new areas such as cosmetics. was a person
Former Editor-in-Chief of British Vogue Alexandra Shulman wrote on Twitter:
Quant was perfectly positioned to capitalize on the 1960s ‘young shiver’. She felt that the era of high-end salons had come to an end, and she thought that even the great Parisian designers would follow ready-to-wear trends.
The looks she creates are sexy and fun, a departure from the predictable floral day dresses commonly worn during the conservative and austere era after World War II.
Quant introduced miniskirts with hemlines up to 8 inches above the knee onto the London scene in 1966, shocking and offending the elders and becoming an instant hit with youngsters.
Some argue that she was the first to develop the style, but the French designer whose Spring 1964 collection included mini dresses that were popular in Paris but did not have wide influence outside France. Some people cite the short skirt worn by actress Anne Francis in the 1956 film Forbidden Planet as the first example of a miniskirt.
Whether she designed them in the first place or not, it was Kwant who figured out how to market miniskirts to the masses.
Quanto, who named the skirt after her favorite car, the Mini, recalled how it provided a “feeling of freedom and liberation”. From her shop, she was part of the clothing revolution.
“It was the girls from King’s Road who invented the mini. I was making clothes that allowed them to run and dance, so the length the customer wanted,” she said. “Shorter, more”.
Courrèges grew out of the haute couture tradition, and his expensive clothes were intended for a limited audience, while Quant used a variety of materials and colors to create the mini style that was popular with young women on a limited budget. I made a skirt.
Jenny Lister, who curated the 2020 exhibition, said, “She had a vision of fashion as a way to resist stereotypes, blowing down the walls of snobbery and tradition. Dedicated to quants at Victoria, London. & Albert Museum.
“Today’s fashion owes Mary Quant to being innovative and pioneering.”
She rose to the top of the fashion scene at a time when the Beatles and Rolling Stones were dominating the music world and was forever associated with the fierce freedom of the 1960s.
The dress became so popular that it was worn by models such as Twiggy, the Beatles’ guitarist, and Pattie Boyd, who married George Harrison.
When asked by The Guardian in 1967 if her clothes could be considered “vulgar” because they are so skimpy, Quanto replied that she liked vulgarity and accepted it.
“Taste is death, vulgarity is life,” she said, adding that her models’ provocative poses reflected the era’s new sexual liberation facilitated by the development of oral contraceptives.
Born on 11 February 1930, the daughter of a schoolteacher, Quant studied art education at Goldsmiths College in London before moving into the fashion industry. She first worked as an apprentice to her hatmaker before she experimented with her own designs.
With the help of her wealthy husband and business partner Alexander Plunkett-Green and accountant Archie McNair, she opened Bazaar in Chelsea in 1955.
“Snobbery has gone out of style, and in our store you can find the Duchess competing with a typist to buy the same dress. She called the store a ‘sophisticated candy store for adults’. called.
Bazaars became a focal point for young and beautiful people, and those who wanted to stand shoulder to shoulder with them.
The store was so successful that she soon moved to other parts of London and began exporting clothes to the United States, where the “British invasion” was in full swing.
Quanto is unusual in that he often models his own clothes and usually has his hair styled into a distinctive angular bob by hairdresser Vidal Sassoon.
She quickly diversified her interests, developing a popular makeup line and branching out into kitchen and home products.
This make-up proved highly profitable, especially in Japan, where quants maintained a devoted following.
Quant is also known for introducing hot pants and micro minis to the fashion scene in the late 1960s.
She was made an Officer of the Order of the British Empire in 1966 for her services to the fashion industry, and wore a miniskirt when honored at Buckingham Palace.In 2014, she was knighted for her services to British fashion. I became a noblewoman, a woman who is worthy of being.
Earlier this year, she was made a member of the Medal of Honor, a royal honor limited to 65 people who are “prominent” in the arts, sciences, medicine, or government.
Ms. Quants resigned from the day-to-day management of her company, Mary Quant Ltd., which was acquired by a Japanese company in 2000, but continued working as a consultant.
Continuing to use the daisy motif and logo pioneered by Quant in the 1960s, the company has about 200 stores in Japan, as well as a long-standing store in London.
https://abc7ny.com/mary-quant-death-fashion-designer-dies-london-60s/13125475/ Mary Quant dies: Visionary fashion designer who styled ’60s swinging and popularized miniskirts at 93