Mary Quant, the British designer who revolutionized fashion and epitomized the style of the Swinging Sixties, a playful, youthful ethos that sprang from the streets, not a Paris atelier, died on Thursday at her home in Surrey, in southern England. Known as the mother of the miniskirt, she was 93.
Her family announced the death in a statement given to the Press Association of Britain, saying that she had died “peacefully.”
England was emerging from its postwar privations when, in 1955, Ms. Quant and her aristocratic boyfriend, Alexander Plunket Greene, both just out of art school, opened a boutique called Bazaar on London’s King’s Road, in the heart of Chelsea. Ms. Quant filled it with the outfits that she and her bohemian friends were wearing, “a bouillabaisse of clothes and accessories,” as she wrote in an autobiography, “Quant on Quant” (1966) — short flared skirts and pinafores, knee socks and tights, funky jewelry and berets in all colors.
Young women at the time were turning their backs on the corseted shapes of their mothers, with their nipped waists and ship’s-prow chests — the shape of Dior, which had dominated since 1947. They disdained the uniform of the establishment — the signifiers of class and age telegraphed by the lacquered helmets of hair, the twin sets and heels, and the matchy-matchy accessories — the model for which was typically in her 30s, not a young gamine like Ms. Quant. » | Penelope Green | Thursday, April 13, 2023
Fashion designer Dame Mary Quant dies aged 93: Family says she was ‘an outstanding innovator of the Swinging Sixties’ and died peacefully at home »
Equal parts practical and daring: how Mary Quant created look for a new way of living: Swinging 60s icon brought a sense of female liberty to her designs »
LESEN SIE AUCH:
Sie brachte den Frauen Beinfreiheit: In einer Zeit, in der Frauen noch keine Hosen trugen, war der Minirock eine Befreiung. Nun ist seine Erfinderin Mary Quant im Alter von 93 Jahren gestorben. »
LIRE AUSSI :
Mary Quant, la créatrice qui a popularisé la minijupe, est morte : Avec sa jupe raccourcie dévoilant les jambes des jeunes filles, les couleurs vives et les tissus légers ou innovants de ses collections, elle a insufflé dans les années 1960 un vent de légèreté dans le monde de la mode. Elle est décédée le 13 avril, à l’âge de 93 ans. »
