Mary Quant

For more information on Mary Quant, visit Britannica.com.

With her introduction of the miniskirt and new "mod" look, Mary Quant (born 1934) began a fashion revolution. Although her designs eventually faded in popularity, Quant's business expanded to include everything from carpet to swimsuits to toys.

Mary Quant was born February 11, 1934 in London, England to Welsh teachers. Her childhood was disrupted and colored by World War II-for the better, she later recalled in her 1966 autobiography Quant by Quant. "Almost my first clear memory is the day we were evacuated from Blackheath to a village in Kent," she wrote. That village, on the east coast of England, placed the family directly beneath the path of enemy planes flying over the coast on their way to bomb London. "Because we had no understanding of the grim tragedies of war," she remembered, "this was tremendous fun." She would run with her brother, Tony, and friends to investigate and ransack crashed planes, taking everything they could carry. "Our prize possession was some poor pilot's thumb which had been shot off and which we carefully preserved in vinegar in an airtight bottle," she gleefully noted.

Quant's schooling was random as her parents moved the family around the countryside, seeking teaching jobs and safety. At one point, Quant's parents sent her away to a "very proper, very correct, absolutely heartless" boarding school near Tunbridge Wells. Normally, however, she was near her family, finding all manner of mischief with Tony. While living on the coast one summer, Quant and her brother formed a business teaching rich visitors to sail. When the weather didn't allow boating, Quant wrote in Quant by Quant, she stayed home and sewed. "I think I always knew that what I wanted to do most of all was to make clothes … clothes that would be fun to wear. As a very small child, I had idolized a little girl we knew who took tap dancing lessons and wore very skinny black sweaters, short black pleated skirts and long black tights, white ankle socks and black patent ankle strap shoes," Quant recalled. "How I envied her!" Her artistic expression was flavored with the same measure of mischief found in her other pursuits. "When I was about six and in bed with measles," she wrote, "I spent one night cutting up the bedspread with nail scissors. Even at that age I could see that the wild color of the bedspread would make a super dress."

After completing her primary education in 1951, Quant's parents encouraged her to begin pursuing a career. "It was made absolutely clear to both of us from the start that we would have to earn our own livings," she wrote. "My parents never even considered the possibility that marriage might be a way out for girls. I was made terribly aware that it was entirely my own responsibility to make a success of my life."

Enrolled in Art School

Unfortunately, Quant's idea of a career path didn't quite match her parents' expectations. They wanted her to choose a sturdy, practical vocation. "It was only with the greatest difficulty that I ever persuaded them to allow me to go to art school," she related in Quant by Quant. "It was only when I managed to win a scholarship to Goldsmiths' that I was able to persuade them to agree to a compromise … if they would allow me to go to Goldsmiths', I would take the Art Teachers' Diploma."

With her parents' qualified permission, Quant enrolled at Goldsmiths' College of Art in London. Almost immediately she met Alexander Plunket Greene, who became her business partner and, later, husband. Her classmates, including Greene, were an education unto themselves, she wrote. "It was only when I went to Goldsmiths' that, for the first time in my life, I realized that there are people who give their lives to the pursuit of pleasure and indulgence of every kind in preference to work," Quant marveled. "At first it was a shock even to me; to my parents, such a thing was incomprehensible." Quant spent several years reveling in the atmosphere of Goldsmiths', but left after failing to earn her Art Teachers' Diploma. She took a job working for a Danish milliner, earning such a tiny salary she ate only occasionally.

Opened Bazaar

Meanwhile, Greene and Quant had paired up with a friend named Archie McNair. When Greene inherited 5,000 pounds on his 21st birthday, the three decided to go into business together. They rented Markham House, a three-story building on King's Road in London's artist district, Chelsea. In Markham House, they opened a boutique on the first floor and a restaurant in the basement. They called the boutique Bazaar. Its owners knew little about the business beyond Quant's fashion philosophy: "I can't bear over-accessorization … a white hat worn with white gloves, white shoes and a white umbrella," she declared in Quant by Quant. "Rules are invented for lazy people who don't want to think for themselves."

True to her philosophy, Quant searched for the clothes she herself wanted to wear, selling miniskirts, funky dresses, bright tights and bras called Booby Traps to young people. The shop capitalized on the buying power of baby boomers, those born during the sharp increase in birthrate following the end of World War II, who were beginning to grow into teenagers.

Naive about the mechanics of running a retail business, Quant and her partners sold their wares with a markup much smaller than any nearby store, without realizing they were actually taking a loss on many items. "It was no wonder we did such a roaring trade the moment we opened," she later wrote. "The shop was constantly stripped bare-sometimes we hardly had enough to dress the window-because we never bought enough of anything."

Quant quickly discovered that manufacturers weren't making the kinds of clothes she wanted to sell, so she set up her own manufacturing outfit in her apartment, hiring a dressmaker to come during the day and help. Quant herself sewed dresses at night to sell the next day in the shop. "I had to sell one day's output before I had the money to go out and buy more material," she recalled, noting that at first, "I didn't think of myself as a designer. I just knew that I wanted to concentrate on finding the right clothes for the young to wear and the right accessories to go with them."

Struggling to make ends meet and suffering ridicule from the press and some passers-by, Quant persevered. In less than ten years, her clothing designs was world famous, selling in 150 shops in Britain, 320 stores in the United States, and throughout the world: France, Italy, Switzerland, Kenya, South Africa, Australia, Canada, and more.

Branched Out

In 1957, Quant and her business partner, Alexander Plunket Greene, were married. In 1970, they had a son, Orlando. "We had an awful wedding," she recounted in Quant by Quant. "The Registrar, or whoever it was, put on a sanctified Dearly Beloved voice; he treated us in an impossibly pompous manner and went purple in the face with the effort."

Shortly thereafter, they decided to take another plunge, and opened a second shop, this one in the more swank Knightsbridge neighborhood. Soon, their production shifted into even higher gear when, in 1963, Quant was approached to design a line for J.C. Penney, at that time the biggest retail chain in the United States. Quant was selected to give the stores a more up-to-date image, with her bright, geometric printed dresses. "It was the first time ever that the clothes of a named British designer had been promoted throughout a large chain of stores across the States," Quant recalled. "It was exciting but worrying too."

Mod Look is Worldwide Phenomenon

She needen't have worried. Suddenly available on a mass scale, the "mod" look took the fashion world by storm. "I really believe that when the whole thing had first been planned, it had been looked upon purely as a promotional idea," she disclosed in Quant by Quant. The store's managers decided to stick with Quant as they watched sales soar.

With the flood of Quant designs came a change in the way women dress. "Fashion had always been dictated from above, by Parisian couturiers and other authorities," wrote William L. O'Neill in Coming Apart: An Informal History of America in the 1960s. Fashion "was a monopoly of the rich. But in the sixties it was the young, and relatively unknown designers like Quant and Gernreich who catered to them, who set the pace.… Not since the 1920s had women's clothing changed so radically. No one could remember when the flow of fashion had been reversed on such a scale." Quant herself, in her autobiography, echoed the same sentiment. "There was a time when clothes were a sure sign of a woman's social position and income group. Not now," she wrote in 1966. "Snobbery has gone out of fashion, and in our shops you will find duchesses jostling with typists to buy the same dress."

Even as she was changing the look of women worldwide, Quant was getting a crash course in the fashion business. "We were not the first to find out it doesn't always pay to be first in the field," she wrote. "The pioneer is the one who makes the mistakes, discovers the snags and prepares the ground for those who more cautiously follow after." Case in point was Quant's foray into clothing made from PVC, a vinyl material. She designed a line in PVC and orders piled up, but Quant's manufacturers' machines couldn't sew the material.

Despite the setbacks, Quant won a prestigious Sunday Times Fashion Award, shocking an entire industry that had previously been ruled by couture houses selling expensive, made-to-order clothes by famous designers. Quant's place in fashion history was secured when the London Museum mounted its 1973 retrospective exhibit, "Mary Quant's London."

Quant Empire Grew

Although Quant's designs eventually faded in popularity, the business continued to expand to include everything from carpet to swimsuits to toys. In 1983, she launched "Mary Quant at Home," a line of household furnishings featuring wall paper and china, based around a chosen color scheme. Color, in the form of cosmetics, was her lasting passion. In Quant by Quant, she explained her entrance into the field: "In the fifties, there was no makeup around that I wanted to wear," she told Vogue's Gully Wells. "So I started experimenting with crayons. The best were Caran d'Ache colored pencils. … Then the models started using theatrical makeup to get the look they wanted, so finally I decided to start producing my own line in 1966." Quant ultimately focused her energy almost entirely on her cosmetics line, which sold worldwide but was most popular in Japan, where, by the mid-1990s, Quant had more than 200 stores. Besides her autobiography, she had penned two additional books: Colour by Quant, published in 1984, and Quant on Make-up, in 1986.

Further Reading

Contemporary Designers, 2nd edition, edited by Colin Naylor, St.James Press, 1990.

McDowell, Colin, McDowell's Directory of Twentieth Century Fashion, Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1985.

Quant, Mary, Quant by Quant G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1966.

Stegemeyer, Anne, Who's Who in Fashion, Fairchild Publications, 1988.

Vare, Ethlie Ann and Greg Ptacek, Mothers of Invention: From the Bra to the Bomb: Forgotten Women & Their Unforgettable Ideas William Morrow and Company, 1988.

Management, September 1997.

Vogue, July 1995; February 1999.

"Mary Quant," A&E Network Biography, http://www.biography.com (March 2, 1999).

An important figure in British fashion design, Quant studied art and design art Goldsmith's College of Art from 1952 to 1955, during which time she also took evening classes in clothing construction and cutting. In 1955 she opened her first shop Bazaar in the King's Road in bohemian Chelsea, London, which was followed up with a second outlet, designed by Terence Conran in Knightsbridge in 1957. Working closely with Alexander Plunkett Green, whom she had married in 1957, she founded both the Mary Quant Ginger Group (for wholesale clothing design and production) and Mary Quant Limited in 1963. Despite the fact that her merchandise was comparatively expensive, during the 1960s the name Mary Quant became almost synonymous with the internationally recognized concept of ‘Swinging London’, particularly through the popularization of the miniskirt, a ubiquitous fashion icon of the Pop era and symbol of new-found sexual freedoms. She also explored the possibilities of new materials, as with her designs for tights for the Nylon Hosiery Company in 1965, and branched out into cosmetics in the following year. Quant was also successful in the United States in the 1960s, designing a clothing and underwear collection for the J. C. Penney Company in 1962, a dress collection for Puritan Clothing, New York, in 1964 and patterns for Butterick Paper Patterns. Since then her work has encompassed many product ranges including berets and hats for Kangol (1967), bed linen and curtains for Dorma (1972), sunglasses for Polaroid (1977), Axminster Carpets for Templetons (1978), shoes for K Shoes (1982), and clothing for Great Universal Stores (1987). In the late 1990s she opened shops in Paris and New York. Quant has received many awards throughout her career, ranging from ‘Woman of the Year’ in London in 1963 to the Order of the British Empire in 1966 and election as Royal Designer for Industry in 1969. She wrote her autobigraphy Quant by Quant in 1966 and in 1973 featured in the Mary Quant's London exhibition at the London Museum.

• Born: Kent, 11 February 1934.
• Education: Studied art and design at Goldsmith's College of Art, London University, 1952-55.
• Family: Married Alexander Plunket Greene, 1957 (died, 1990); children: Orlando.
• Career: Fashion designer, from 1955; established Bazaar boutique and Alexander's restaurant, London, 1955; founder/director, Mary Quant Ginger Group wholesale design and manufacturing firm, 1963, and Mary Quant, Ltd., 1963; cosmetics line introduced, 1966; launched hot pants, 1969; member, Design Council, London, from 1971; Mary Quant Japan franchise shops established, 1983; has designed for J.C. Penney, Puritan Fashions, Alligator Rainwear, Kangol, Dupont Europe, Staffordshire Potteries, and many more; authored several books; opened Mary Quant Colour Shops, 1990s; stepped down from firm bearing her name, 2000.
• Exhibitions:Mary Quant's London, Museum of London, 1973.
• Awards: Woman of the Year award, London, 1963; the Sunday Times International Fashion award, London, 1963; Bath Museum of Costume Dress of the Year award, 1963; Maison Blanche Rex award, New Orleans, 1964; Piavola d'Oro award, 1966; Chartered Society of Designers medal, 1966; Officer, Order of the British Empire, 1966; Fellow, Chartered Society of Designers, 1967; Royal Designer for Industry, Royal Society of Arts, 1969; British Fashion Council Hall of Fame award, 1990; Senior Fellow, Royal College of Art, London, 1991.
• Address: 3 Ives St., London SW3 2NE, England.
• Website:www.maryquant.com.

The name Mary Quant is synonymous with 1960s fashion. Quant's designs initiated a look for the newly emerging teen-and-twenties market enabling young women to establish their own identity and put Britain on the international fashion map.

Quant did not study fashion; following parental advice she enrolled in an Art Teacher's Diploma course at Goldsmith's College, London University, but she was not committed to teaching. In the evenings she went to pattern cutting classes. Her fashion career began in 1955, in the workrooms of the London milliner, Erik, the same year she opened her boutique, Bazaar in King's Road, Chelsea, in partnership with her future husband, Alexander Plunket-Greene. The idea was to give the so-called Chelsea Set "a bouillabaisse of clothes and accessories." Quant was the buyer, but she soon found the kinds of clothes she wanted were not available. The solution was obvious, but not easy—21 years old, with little fashion experience, Quant started manufacturing from her home. Using revamped Butterick patterns and fabrics bought retail at Harrods, she created a look for the Chelsea girl. Her customers were hardly younger than herself and she knew what they wanted; her ideas took off in a big way, on both sides of the Atlantic.

Americans loved the London Look, so much so that in 1957 Quant signed a contract with J.C. Penney to create clothes and underwear for the wholesale market. American coordinates convinced her that separates were versatile and ideal for the young. To reach more of the British market in 1958 she launched the Ginger Group, a mass-produced version of the look, with U.S. manufacturer Steinberg's. In the same year she was nominated as Woman of the Year in Britain and the Sunday Times in London gave her its International Fashion award.

Quant created a total look based on simple shapes and bold fashion statements. She hijacked the beatnik style of the late 1950s: dark stockings, flat shoes, and polo necks became obligatory for the girl in the street. The pinafore dress, based on the traditional British school tunic, was transformed as one of the most useful garments of the early 1960s. Hemlines rose higher and higher; Quant's miniskirts reached thigh level, in 1965, and everyone followed. Courréges confirmed that the time was right by launching his couture version in Paris but Quant needed no confirmation—1965 was the year of her whistlestop tour to the United States. With 30 outfits and her own models, she showed in 12 cities in 14 days. Sporting miniskirts and Vidal Sassoon's five-point geometric haircuts, the models ran and danced down the catwalk. It was the epitome of Swinging London and it took America by storm.

Quant's talents did not go unnoticed in higher places. In 1966 she was awarded the OBE for services to fashion and went to Buckingham Palace wearing a miniskirt. Her cosmetics line was also launched this year, and recognizable by the familiar daisy logo, Quant cosmetics were an international success. Later taken over by Max Factor, they were retailed in 90 countries. Additionally, she experimented with new materials including PVC and nylon, to create outerwear, shoes, tights, and swimwear.

In the early 1970s Quant moved out of mass market and began to work for a wider age group, chiefly for export to the U.S. and Europe. Her range of merchandise expanded to include household goods, toys, and furnishings. Mary Quant at Home, launched in the U.S. market in 1983, included franchised home furnishings and even wine. By the end of the 1980s her designs were again reaching the British mass market, through the pages of the Great Universal Stores/Kays mail order catalogues.

Mary Quant remained a genuine fashion innovator well into the 1990s and into the 2000s. She adjusted to change—the 1960s designer for the youth explosion became a creator for the 1980s and beyond lifestyle boom. Her market had grown up with her and she was able to anticipate its demands. Along the way she began publishing books, autobiographical to start, and later on beauty and cosmetics. It wasn't until she was in her 60s that Mary Quant stepped down as director of Mary Quant Ltd., in 2000. She did, however, remain a consultant for the myriad of products she pioneered over the last four decades.

Publications

By Quant:

Books
• Quant by Quant, Bath, 1966, 1974; New York, 1967.
• Mary Quant's Daisy Chain of Things to Do, Glasgow, 1975.
• Colour by Quant, with Felicity Greene, London, 1984; New York,1985.
• Quant on Makeup, with Vicci Bentley, London, 1986; New York,1987.
• The Ultimate Beauty Book, Ontario, 1996.
• Classic Makeup & Beauty Book, with Maureen Barrymore and Dave King, London, 1998.

Articles
• "A Personal Design for Living," in the Listener (London), 19-26December 1974.
• "Things I Wish I'd Known at 19," in the Sunday Express Magazine (London), 21 June 1982.

On Quant:

Books
• Halliday, Leonard, The Fashion Makers, London, 1966.
• Bender, Marylin, The Beautiful People, New York, 1967.
• Morris, Brian, and Ernestine Carter, An Introduction to Mary Quant's London, [exhibition catalogue], London 1973.
• Bernard, Barbara, Fashion in the Sixties, London, 1978.
• Carter, Ernestine, Magic Names of Fashion, Englewood Cliffs, NJ,1980.
• MacCarthy, Fiona, and Patrick Nugent, Eye for Industry: Royal Designers for Industry 1936-1986 [exhibition catalogue], London, 1986.
• Whiteley, Nigel, Pop Design: Modernism to Mod [exhibition catalogue], Design Council, London, 1987.
• Lobenthal, Joel, Radical Rags: Fashions of the Sixties, New York,1990.
• Stegemeyer, Anne, Who's Who in Fashion, Third Edition, New York,1996.
• Cawthorne, Nigel, Key Moments in Fashion, London, 1998.
• Strodder, Chris, Swingin' Chicks of the Sixties, New York, 2000.

Articles
• "British Couple Kooky Styles," in Life (New York), 5 December 1960.
• "Brash New Breed of British Designers," in Life, 8 October 1963.
• Davis, John, "Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary, How Does Your Money Grow?" in the Observer (London), 19 August 1973.
• De'Ath, Wilfred, "The Middle Age of Mary Quant," in the Illustrated London News, February 1974.
• Kingsley, H., "How Does Her Empire Grow?," in the Sunday Telegraph Magazine (London), 29 March 1981.
• Jackson, Jan, "Interview with Mary Quant," in the Leicester Mercury (England), 12 November 1984.
• Lowe, Shirley, "Mary's Quantum Leap into the 1980," in the Sunday Times Magazine (London), 10 August 1986.
• Savage, Percy, "Mary Quant," in Art & Design (London), September 1986.
• Orr, Deborah, "Minis to the Masses," in the New Statesman & Society (London), 19 October 1990.
• Kay, Helen, "Uppers and Downers: British Entrepreneurs of the Past 25 Years," in Management Today (London), 9 October 1991.
• Gandee, Charles, "Mod Mary," in Vogue, July 1995.
• Terry, Elizabeth, "Beauty Black Book—Proud Mary," in In Style, 1March 1996.
• "All Revolutions Start Somewhere," in Management, September 1997.
• Gillan, Audrey, "Mary Quant Quits Fashion Empire," in The Guardian, 2 December 2000.
• Holmes, Lee, "A to Z of Fashion—Q is for Quant," in the Independent on Sunday, 7 October 2001.

— Hazel Clark; updated by Owen James

Quotes:

"Having money is rather like being a blond. It is more fun but not vital."

Mary Quant OBE
Born	11 February 1934 (1934-02-11) (age 75) Blackheath, Kent, England
Nationality	British
Education	Goldsmith's College
Labels	Mary Quant
Awards	OBE, FCSD

Mary Quant, OBE, FCSD (born 11 February 1934 in Blackheath, Kent, England) is a British fashion designer, one of the many designers who took credit for inventing the miniskirt and hot pants. Born to Welsh parents, Quant went to Blackheath High School then studied illustration at Goldsmiths College before taking a career with a couture milliner. She is also famed for her work on pop art in fashion.

Contents 1 Early career 2 Miniskirt 3 Later career 4 See also 5 Notes 6 External links

Early career

In November 1955, she teamed up with her husband, Alexander Plunkett-Grene, and a former solicitor, Archie Mcnair, to open a clothes shop on the Kings Road in London called Bazaar. Bazaar's best sellers were small white plastic collars to brighten up black dresses or a black sweat shirt. Black stretch stockings were popular too.

Following the positive reaction to a pair of "mad house pyjamas" designed for the opening, and dissatisfied with the variety of clothes available to her, Quant decided to make her own range of clothing. Initially working solo, she was soon employing a handful of machinists, and by 1966 she was working with 18 different manufacturers concurrently.

She has one son, Orlando.^[1]

Miniskirt

Skirts had been getting shorter since about 1958 – a development Mary Quant considered to be practical and liberating, allowing women the ability to run for a bus. The miniskirt, for which she is arguably most famous, became one of the defining fashions of the 1960s. The miniskirt was developed separately by André Courrèges and John Bates^[2], and there is disagreement as to who came up with the idea first. Mary Quant named the miniskirt after her favorite make of car, the Mini; she loved this car so much, she had one designed especially for her.

In addition to the miniskirt, Mary Quant is often credited with inventing the coloured and patterned tights that tended to accompany the garment, although these are also attributed to Cristobal Balenciaga or John Bates.^[2]

Later career

In the late 1960s, Quant popularised hot pants. Through the 1970s and 1980s she concentrated on household goods and make-up, rather than just her clothing lines. At a talk at the Victoria & Albert Museum in 2007 she claimed to have invented duvet covers.

In 1988, Quant designed the interior of the Mini (1000) Designer (Originally dubbed the Mini Quant, this name was switched when popularity charts were set against having Quant's name on the car). It featured black and white striped seats with red trimming. The seatbelts were red, and the driving and passenger seats had Quant's signature on the upper left quadrant. The steering wheel had Quant's signature daisy and the bonnet badge had "Mary Quant" written over the signature name. The headlight housings, wheel arches, door handles and bumpers were all nimbus grey, rather than the more common chrome or black finishes. 2000 were released in the UK on 15 June 1988, a number were also released on to foreign markets, however the numbers for these are hard to come by. The special edition Mini came in two body colours, jet black and diamond white.

She is also a Fellow of the Chartered Society of Designers, and winner of the Minerva Medal, the Society's highest award.

In 2000, she resigned as director of Mary Quant Ltd., her cosmetics company, after a Japanese buy-out. There are over 200 Mary Quant Colour shops in Japan, where Quant fashions continue to enjoy more popularity.

See also

Daisy doll by Mary Quant

Notes

This section needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding reliable references. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (December 2008)

1. ^ Quant on Quant by Mary Quant p.34 2nd paragraph
2. ^ ^{a b} Lester, Richard, John Bates: Fashion Designer, London, 2008

External links

• film and television credits
• Database containing Mary Quant clothing in the fashion and textiles collection at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London
• "Mary Quant, A New Approach Chelsea 1955–1967". Fashion, Jewellery & Accessories. Victoria and Albert Museum. http://www.vam.ac.uk/collections/fashion/1960s/exhibition/quant/index.html. Retrieved 2007-06-08. 
• Sewing patterns by Mary Quant

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