Mary Quant, the visionary fashion designer whose colourful, sexy miniskirts epitomized London in the 1960s and influenced youth culture around the world, has passed away. She was 93. Quant’s family said she died “peacefully at home” in Surrey, southern England, on Thursday.
Quant helped popularize the miniskirt — some credit her with inventing it — and the innovative tights and accessories that were an integral part of the look. She also created dresses and other simple mix-and-match garments that had an element of whimsy.
Some compared her impact on the fashion world with The Beatles’ impact on pop music. “I think it was a happy confluence of events, which is really what fashion is so often all about,” said Hamish Bowles, international editor at large for a popular American magazine. “She was the right person with the right sensibility in the right place at the right time. She appeared on the scene at the exact cusp of the ’60s.”
Quant was also an astute businesswoman and one of the first to understand how branding herself as a creative force could help her sustain her business and branch out into new fields, like cosmetics, he said.
Quant was perfectly positioned to capitalize on the “youthquake” of the 1960s. She sensed that the days of exclusive salons were numbered, and thought that even the great Parisian designers would follow ready-to-wear trends. The look she created was sexy and fun, a sharp break from the predictable floral day dresses commonly worn in the conservative, austere years after World War II.
Quant introduced miniskirts with hemlines up to 8 inches above the knee to the London scene in 1966 and they were an instant hit with young people, in part because they shocked and offended their elders.
While some insist she first developed the style, many also credit French designer Andre Courreges, whose 1964 spring collection included minidresses that were popular in Paris but did not have a widespread impact outside France. Others cite the short skirts worn by actress Anne Francis in the 1956 film “Forbidden Planet” as the first example of the miniskirt.
Whether or not she was the first to design them, it was Quant who figured out how to market miniskirts to the masses. Quant, who named the skirt after her favourite make of car, the Mini, recalled how it offered a “feeling of freedom and liberation." From her shop on King’s Road in London's trendy Chelsea neighbourhood, she was part of a clothing revolution.
She shot to the top of the fashion scene at the time when The Beatles and Rolling Stones dominated the music world, and she was forever linked to the heady freedoms of the 1960s. The clothes became wildly popular and were worn by models such as Twiggy and Pattie Boyd, who was then married to Beatles guitarist George Harrison.