Mary Quant, the British designer who revolutionized fashion and became synonymous with the chic of the “British invasion” of the “Swinging Sixties” in global culture, died on Thursday at her home in Surrey, in southern England. Quant was known as the mother of the miniskirt, she was 93. Her family announced the death in a statement given to the Press Association of Britain, saying that she had died “peacefully.”
The designer embodied a playful, youthful ethos that sprang from the streets. Previous to the fashion revolution that she started, style was created and dictated for women from a Paris atelier–and mostly by men. Quant democratized fashion and made it more youthful and accessible.
In 1955, Ms. Quant and her aristocratic boyfriend, Alexander Plunket Greene, both just out of art school, opened a boutique called Bazaar on London’s King’s Road, in the heart of Chelsea. Ms. Quant filled it with the outfits that she and her bohemian friends were wearing, “a bouillabaisse of clothes and accessories,” as she wrote in an autobiography, “Quant on Quant” (1966) — short flared skirts and pinafores, knee socks and tights, funky jewelry and berets in all colors.
It was a time of innovation in all aspects of British culture as the country finally escaped from the privations brought on by WWII. Young women at the time were turning their backs on the stuffy, rigid corseted shapes of their mothers, with their nipped waists and ship’s-prow chests — the shape of Dior, which had dominated since 1947. They rejected the lacquered helmets of hair, the twin sets and heels, and the matchy-matchy accessories — the model for which was typically in her 30s, not a young gamine like Ms. Quant.
Endlessly resourceful, when she couldn’t find the pieces she wanted, Ms. Quant made them herself, buying fabric at retail from the luxury department store Harrods and stitching them at home.
The boutique was a hit from the start. And it soon became a destination not only for the fashion but for its inventive window displays. It began to attract models as well, adding cachet to the shop and further enhancing its success.
A decade later, Mary Quant was a global brand, with licenses all over the world — she was named an officer of the Order of the British Empire in 1966 for her contribution to British exports — and sales that would soon reach $20 million. When she toured the United States with a new collection, she was greeted like a fifth Beatle; at one point she required police protection.
Newspapers eagerly printed her insights and declarations: “Quant Expects Higher Hem,” The Associated Press declared in the winter of 1966, adding that Ms. Quant had “predicted today that the miniskirt was here to stay.” And apparently, she predicted correctly. The world of fashion has lost a pioneer, an icon and a piece of history.
