Fashion designer Dame Mary Quant, the designer widely credited for inventing the mini skirt and pioneering Swinging Sixties style, has died aged 93.
A statement issued by her family on Thursday (13 April) said Quant “died peacefully at home in Surrey, UK this morning”.
It continued: “Dame Mary, aged 93, was one of the most internationally recognised fashion designers of the 20th century and an outstanding innovator of the Swinging Sixties.”
Among her many achievements, Quant was known for pioneering the high hemlines that were made popular during a decade of cultural and social revolution in the UK.
The official Twitter account of the Victoria & Albert Museum, which recently hosted an exhibition about Dame Mary Quant‘s designs, shared a tribute that said it was “hard to overstate” the impact Quant had on the fashion world.
“She represented the joyful freedom of 1960s fashion, and provided a new role model for young women,” the statement said. “Fashion today owes so much to her trailblazing vision.”
Alexandra Shulman, former editor-in-chief of British Vogue, also paid tribute to the late fashion designer, writing on Twitter: “RIP Dame Mary Quant. A leader of fashion but also in female entrepreneurship – a visionary who was much more than a great haircut.”
Author Linda Grant added: “She was to fashion in the sixties what the Beatles were to music. Changed everything from hemlines, silhouette and makeup.”
Quant was born in Blackheath, south London, and was the daughter of Welsh school teachers. She studied illustration at Goldsmiths, University of London, where she met her husband, Alexander Plunket Greene.
After graduating, she secured an apprenticeship as a milliner. When her husband opened a boutique on the ground floor of a building he had bought in 1995, named Bazaar, Quant focused on designing clothes that were then sold in the shop.
She was a self-taught designer and attended evening classes on pattern cutting to achieve the innovative looks that she envisioned.
Quant strived to create “relaxed clothes suited to the actions of normal life”. Pioneering wearable yet flattering silhouettes and hemlines, Quant’s clothes became widely popular.
She went on to design both women’s and menswear, playing with proportions of the body and taking influences from earlier eras.
The designer is often credited for inventing the decade’s most iconic look and timeless classic: the mini-skirt. Short skirts and shift dresses then became Quant’s trademark, with high-profile models, like Twiggy, regularly seen wearing her designs.
In 2014, Dame Mary, who named the skirt after her favourite make of car, recalled its “feeling of freedom and liberation”.
She said: “It was the girls on King’s Road who invented the mini. I was making clothes which would let you run and dance and we would make them the length the customer wanted.
“I wore them very short and the customers would say, ‘shorter, shorter’.”
Other styles from the 1960s included Peter Pan collars, as well as knitwear, swimwear, accessories and garments made using Butterick patterns, and the “dangerously short” micro-mini skirt, as well as “paint box” make-up and plastic raincoats.
Her clothes were popularised by Jean Shrimpton, Pattie Boyd, Cilla Black and Twiggy.
In 1988, she designed the interior of her beloved Mini 1000 motor car.
She resigned as director of Mary Quant Ltd, her cosmetic company, 12 years later after a Japanese buyout and there were soon more than 200 Mary Quant Colour shops in Japan.
By the end of the Sixties, she had three shops and was the UK’s most high-profile designer.
In 2014, she was made a dame for services to British fashion in the Queen’s New Year list.
She said at the time: “I am absolutely delighted to have been awarded this terrific honour. It is extremely gratifying that my work in the fashion industry has been recognised and acknowledged in such a significant way.”
In 2021, actress and film producer Sadie Frost created a fashion documentary about Dame Mary, titled Quant.
Contributions to the biographical film came from prominent figures in the world of fashion, such as supermodel Kate Moss, designer Dame Vivienne Westwood, beauty entrepreneur and make-up artist Charlotte Tilbury, designer Jasper Conran and designer Dame Zandra Rhodes.
Frost said Dame Mary “changed the whole kind of female silhouette” and stopped women dressing like their mothers by creating “free and daring” designs.
With additional reporting from PA.
