Mary Quant

Mary Quant

Mary Quant OBE, FCSD, RDI (born 11 February 1934) is a fashion designer and British fashion icon. She became an instrumental figure in the 1960s London-based Mod and youth fashion movements. She was one of the designers who took credit for the miniskirt and hot pants, and by promoting these and other fun fashions she encouraged young people to dress to please themselves and to treat fashion as a game. Ernestine Carter, an authoritative and influential fashion journalist of the 1950s and '60s, wrote: "It is given to a fortunate few to be born at the right time, in the right place, with the right talents. In recent fashion there are three: Chanel, Dior, and Mary Quant.Mary Quant

Career

In November 1955, Quant and Plunket Greene teamed up with a photographer and former solicitor, Archie McNair, to open Quant's first shop on the King's Road in London called Bazaar, above "Alexander's", a basement restaurant run by Plunket Green. In 1957, they opened the second branch of Bazaar, which was designed by Terence Conran.

Successful designs from this early period included small white plastic collars to brighten up sweaters and dresses, bright stockings in colours matched to her knitwear, men's cardigans made long enough to be worn as dresses, and a pair of "mad" lounging pyjamas made by Quant herself which were featured in Harper's Bazaar and purchased by an American manufacturer to copy. Following this, Quant decided to design and make more of the clothes she stocked, instead of buying in stock. Initially working solo, she was soon employing a handful of machinists, and by 1966 she was working with eighteen manufacturers[citation needed] concurrently.

For a while in the late 1950s and very early 1960s, Quant was one of only two London-based high-end designers consistently offering youthful clothes for young people. The other was Kiki Byrne, a former Bazaar employee who opened her boutique on the King's Road in direct competition with her former employer.

 Quant was instrumental in the mod fashion movement, and is widely credited as the inventor of the miniskirt and of hotpants. While the new styles were certainly meant to be risque and sexy, they also represented growing liberation in women's fashion--and we owe much of today's skin-baring styles (and the ever-smaller outfits of Katy Perry, Lady Gaga, Ke$ha et al) at least in part to Quant.