Dame Mary Quant, the British designer known as the mother of the miniskirt, has died at age 93. "Good taste is death," she once famously said. "Vulgarity is life."
Quant did not like clothes as they were in the 1950s. She saw the tight, corseted silhouettes popularized by high fashion houses like Dior as too limiting. They didn't make sense for young women coming of age in the second wave of feminism. Instead, Quant wanted clothes that reflected the pleasure of being alive. When she couldn't find that in stores, she decided to make it herself with fabrics bought from Harrods.
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Shortly after graduating from art school, Quant and her then-boyfriend Alexander Plunket Greene opened a boutique, Bazaar, in the heart of London's Chelsea neighborhood. According to her 1966 autobiography, Quant on Quant, she filled it with “a bouillabaisse of clothes and accessories.” There were pleated miniskirts, Peter-Pan collar tops, and shift dresses in bold patterns, often worn with bright candy-colored tights. Women from all over London flocked to the store, not simply for the clothing but also the experience, which was entirely unlike anything they'd experienced at other couturiers and department stores. Whereas those felt mature and stuffy, Mary Quant's boutique felt electric. It offered loud music, free drinks, and a window display filled with mannequins with bob haircuts and sharp cheekbones strumming guitars.
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Ten years later, Mary Quant was a major global brand, making high fashion for the masses. In a 1985 interview on Thames TV, the host cited a recent National Opinion Poll in the UK that found 37% of women had heard of Pierre Cardin, 57% had heard of Yes Saint Laurent, but over 90% knew Mary Quant. When she traveled to the United States to showcase her latest collections, she was mobbed by fans like a pop star and needed extensive security detail. Eventually there was a Mary Quant line at J.C. Penney, Mary Quant makeup with false eyelashes you could buy by the yard, and Mary Quant bedsheets embroidered with her signature rounded daisy logo.
Her aesthetic helped usher in the "Youthquake" of the 1960s. Daringly short mini skirts and shift dresses became Quant's trademark, and were popularized by models Twiggy and Jean Shrimpton. But Quant didn't have to rely on famous women wearing her clothes. Some might even argue that Twiggy and Shrimpton's status as style icons had less to do with them and more to do with how incredible they looked wearing Mary Quant. She was one of the first true celebrity designers, who sold her aesthetic of eccentric British poshness because she epitomized it herself with her Vidal Sassoon five-point bob and painted eyes. She even wore one of her own mini dresses to receive her Order of the British Empire in 1966 at Buckingham Palace. Who wouldn't want to be that woman?
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But of course, Quant was more than a great haircut or a maker of great clothes. She was a liberator of women who helped them realize they should wear what they want to do whatever they pleased. Like her distinct mannequins, her clothing emphasized the importance of movement, inspired by the outfits she wore to dance classes as a child.
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In the spring of 2019, when the Victoria & Albert Museum held a retrospective of her work, curators included a montage featuring thousands of women sharing photos and stories of their favorite Mary Quant pieces. You could make memories in her clothes, not just because of how they photographed but because of how they made you feel. “The fashionable woman wears clothes,” she once said. “The clothes don't wear her.” She was an expert in personal style before it became a 2023 buzzword.
In the 1985 Thames TV interview, Quant also mused, “Fashion is about life. It’s about everything...I think fashion anticipates. It seems to get there first and everything unravels behind it.” Quant was also there first, and the viral mini skirts of today certainly wouldn't have been possible without her.
Mary Quant: Life in Photos
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Tara Gonzalez is the Senior Fashion Editor at Harper’s Bazaar. Previously, she was the style writer at InStyle, founding commerce editor at Glamour, and fashion editor at Coveteur.
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