Feelin' Groovy

The Swinging Sixties have returned to London with two shows devoted to Mary Quant and the Chelsea set of designers. Philippa Stockley looks back

- Philippa Stockley

DO rainbow-tinted tights, stripy and colourful short dresses, ring-pull zips, make-up palettes in shiny black and a five-petalled daisy ring a bell? From 1955 to 1975, one person changed the course of British clothing design and crystallised what American Vogue’s editor-in-chief Diana Vreeland dubbed ‘youthquake’: Mary Quant. A name and style so distinctive that, whether they were young in the 1960s or their mothers were, women recall it vividly. Today, the look is back, attracting their daughters.

In its bright exhibition of 200 items, including 120 outfits, make-up, tights, bags and underwear, the V&A shows how the prolific, inventive designer revolutionised fashion. It all began with Bazaar, a small shop on the King’s Road opened with her boyfriend—soon to be husband —Alexander Plunket Greene and their friend Archie McNair, owner of Fantasie, the nearby coffee shop and mecca for the ‘Chelsea set’. At Bazaar, dresses were sold in umpteen variations to delighted young buyers.

Mary would go on to popularise tailored trousers for women, short hair, hotpants and smooth, light underwear that banished corsets, but the fledgling designer changed more than clothing. Her fastidiously cut dresses— trapezoid, dropped-waist, belted shift, box-pleated or pinafore— drastically improved women’s freedom to move.