Mary Quant

‘The 60s Were Just The Most Exciting, Wonderful Period. I Wouldn’t Choose Another Era To Live In’

- Michelle Davies

She revolutionised fashion and caused a ‘youthquake’ with her miniskirts and bold patterns. Now aged 85, she has collaborated on a retrospective of her work at the V&A

The girl tap-dancing in the room next to Mary Quant’s ballet class was older than she was. But that wasn’t why Quant couldn’t take her eyes off her: it was what she was wearing that transfixed her. ‘[She was] the vision of everything I wanted to be… bobbed hair, wearing a black skinny-rib sweater, seven inches of black pleated skirt, black tights under white ankle socks and black patent leather shoes with ankle straps,’ Quant would recall of the late 30s encounter. ‘The image of that girl stayed with me and I started trying to make my own clothes [by] cutting up bedspreads. That’s all I wanted to do: design clothes.’

What she ended up doing was so much more than that: Quant revolutionised the way women dressed. A key figure of the Swinging Sixties, chief among her achievements was ‘inventing’ the miniskirt, pioneering mass production fashion and modernising the beauty industry’s approach to cosmetics.

To celebrate her status as one of the 20th century’s most influential designers, this April the V&A museum in London is staging a retrospective of Quant’s work from 1955, when her first shop opened on Chelsea’s King’s Road, to 1975. Among the exhibits are rare Quant outfits donated by former customers after the museum launched a #wewantquant call-out. ‘Mary Quant transformed the fashion system, overturning the dominance of luxury couture from Paris,’ says exhibition co-curator Jenny Lister. ‘She dressed the liberated woman, freed from rules and regulations, and from dressing like their mothers.’