Mary Quant dies: Fashion pioneer of swinging sixties dies at 93

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Dame Mary Quant, the designer best known for creating the miniskirt and pioneering Swinging Sixties style, has died aged 93.

A statement issued by her family on Thursday (April 13) said Quant “passed away peacefully this morning at home in Surrey, UK”.

He continued: “Dame Mary, 93, was one of the most internationally renowned fashion designers of the 20th century and an innovator of the Swinging Sixties.

Among her many achievements, Quant is credited with pioneering the UK’s pop culture during the decade of the Cultural and Social Revolution.

The official Twitter account of the Victoria and Albert Museum, which recently hosted an exhibition of designs by Dame Mary Quant, shared a tribute to Quant’s influence on the fashion world, saying it is “difficult to overstate.”

“The fashion of the 1960s represented an exciting freedom and provided a new role model for young women,” the statement said. “Fashion today owes a lot to her vision of traffic.”

Alexandra Shulman, former editor-in-chief of Britain VogueHe also tweeted a tribute to the late fashion designer: “RIP Dame Mary Quant. A leader in fashion but also in female entrepreneurship – a visionary far beyond hair.

Author Linda Grant added: “The Beatles were to fashion in the sixties what they were to music. He changed everything from hemline, figure and makeup.

Quantum appeared at London Airport in 1967

(Popular photo by Getty Images)

Quant was born in Blackheath, South London, the daughter of Welsh school teachers. She studied painting at Goldsmiths, University of London, where she met her husband, Alexander Plunkett Green.

After graduating, she got an internship as a milliner. When her husband opened a boutique on the ground floor of a building Bazar bought in 1995, Quant focused on designing clothes to sell in the store.

She was a self-taught designer and attended night classes in pattern cutting to achieve the new look she envisioned.

British fashion designer Mary Quant’s shop, Bazaar, King’s Road, Chelsea

(Getty Images)

Quant strives to create “relaxed clothes suitable for the activities of ordinary life”. Pioneering wear but with flattering silhouettes and tops, quant dresses became widely popular.

She continued to design both womenswear and menswear, playing with body proportions and taking influences from past eras.

Mary Quant (front page), with models showing her new shoe creations in 1967

(PA)

The designer is often credited with inventing the most iconic look of the decade and a timeless classic: the mini skirt. Short skirts and shift dresses became Quant’s trademark, with high-profile models such as Twiggy regularly seen wearing her designs.

In the year Dame Mary, who named the dress after her favorite car in 2014, recalls the “feeling of freedom and independence”.

She said: “The girls on the King’s Road invented the mini. I would make clothes that would allow you to run and dance and we would make them the length the customer wanted.

“I wore them too short and the customers would say ‘short, short’.”

Other styles in the 1960s included Peter Pan collars, as well as sweaters, swimwear, accessories and clothing made using Butterick patterns and “dangerously short” micro-mini dresses, as well as “paint box” make-up and plastic raincoats.

Her clothes were popularized by Jane Shrimpton, Patti Boyd, Cilla Black and Twiggy.

Anne Godet, wearing Mary Couette’s ‘Smiling Sam’ pants, in printed flannel with pink and yellow.

(PA)

In the year In 1988, she designed the interior of her beloved Mini 1000 motor car.

After 12 years, she resigned as a director of her cosmetics company Mary Quant Ltd. after a Japanese acquisition, and soon there were more than 200 Mary Quant paint shops in Japan.

By the late sixties she had three shops and was the UK’s highest profile designer.

In the year In 2014, she was made a Dame for Services to British Fashion in the Queen’s New Year’s List.

Mary Quant wearing a shift dress in 1966.

(PA)

She said at the time: “I am delighted to be given this wonderful honour. It is very gratifying to have my work in the fashion industry recognized and recognized in such a significant way.

In the year In 2021, actress and film producer Sadie Frost created a documentary about Dame Mary’s fashion; Kunt.

Contributors to the biopic include celebrities from the fashion world, such as supermodel Kate Moss, designer Dame Vivienne Westwood, beauty entrepreneur and make-up artist Charlotte Tilbury, designer Jasper Coran and designer Dame Zandra Rhodes.

Frost Dame Mary “changed the whole image of women” and created “free and bold” designs, stopping women from dressing like their mothers.

With an additional report from Pa.

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