Mary Quant at the V&A

This retrospective is a chance to see the swinging 60s in action – how hemlines rose, young women stopped dressing like their mothers and grandmothers, and fashion became fun. The guiding spirit in this high street revolution was Mary Quant, an ex-student of Goldsmiths College who, with her future husband, Alexander Plunket Greene, turned King's Road, Chelsea, into a mecca for trendsetters. 

Mary Quant with Vidal Sassoon, photograph by Ronald Dumont, 1964 Ronald Dumont Getty Images.

It started with her boutique, Bazaar, which opened in 1955 in tandem with Plunket Greene's restaurant. Mary had her finger on the pulse. She stocked quirky, easy to wear clothes, and when she couldn’t find enough, started making them herself at night in her bedsit, adapting commercial dress patterns. Demand grew; she took on more staff and Bazaar became a destination for professional women seeking modern, streamlined fashion.

Mary Quant selecting fabric, 1967 (C) Rolls PressPopperfoto Getty Images

By the 1960s the fashionable elite were flocking to King’s Road, always in search of something new. Mary has been quoted as saying her now iconic mini-skirts were their doing. “I was making simple, youthful clothes in which you could move ... and we would make them the length the customer wanted. I wore them very short and the customers would say 'shorter, shorter'.” Not everyone approved, but the mini was here to stay.

Mary also turned women’s trousers, then banned from many offices and formal settings such as restaurants, into mainstream garments that were smart and practical. The exhibition, which stretches over two floors and covers the years between 1955 and 1975, includes a number of treasured outfits and accessories that surfaced when the curators appealed on social media for women to share their Quant moments. They stories they gleaned of teenagers going to Bazaar with their mothers for a ‘grown up’ party dress, or of young women choosing a Quant dress for an important job interview, are recorded as well and reflect how important she was to a whole generation.

In 1966, Mary went to Buckingham Palace to receive an OBE for her contribution to the fashion industry. On display is the cream dress she wore (above), the light colour cleverly chosen to show up in media photographs. She used the opportunity to wear Quant from top to toe – a walking advertisement for her brand.

Mary continually played with the jersey dress format, designing multiple options. With her matching berets, brightly coloured tights and shoes, customers could recreate the complete look she had made her own.

Always on the lookout for new ways to grow her business, she took her designs to America and soon they were available through chain stores and mail order companies. “I wanted to provide fashion for everyone,” she says in her autobiography – and she did.

If you couldn’t afford a dress, there were tights, accessories, and a wide range of innovative makeup, all carrying the distinctive daisy logo. Even home sewers and knitters could join her fashion revolution; one exhibition section has a dress made by a fan for her 21^st birthday from one of Mary’s Butterick patterns (below). Alongside it are some of the knitting patterns – skinny-rib jumpers and colourful socks were especially popular.

“Mary Quant transformed the fashion system, overturning the dominance of luxury couture from Paris,” says Jenny Lister, the show’s co-curator. “She dressed the liberated woman, freed from rules and regulations ... This long-overdue exhibition shows how Mary Quant’s brand connected with her customers, how she made designer fashion affordable for the working woman, and how her youthful revolutionary clothes, inspired by London’s creative scene, made British street style the global influence it remains today.” Mary Quant was made a Dame in 2015; this exhibition is a tribute to her genius.

Mary Quant and models at the Quant Afoot footwear collection launch, 1967 © PA Prints 2008

Mary Quant, sponsored by King’s Road, is at the V&A until 16 February 2020. Tickets £12 vam.ac.uk/maryquant

Swinging London - a Lifestyle Revolution

It’s not often you see a stamp celebrating a fashion designer, but in 2009 the Royal Mail chose this image of Mary Quant to be part of a series commemorating innovative British design. The jersey dress she is wearing was one of her favourites – Banana Split, created in 1967 for her Ginger Group collection – and it epitomised the youthful spirit that she and fellow members of the Chelsea set brought to post-war Britain. Swinging London: A Lifestyle Revolution, at the Fashion and Textile Museum, pays tribute to these radical young architects, designers, photographers and artists. Mary Quant, born in 1934, was at the forefront of this group of revolutionaries, who, along with Terence Conran (an old school friend of her husband, Alexander Plunket Greene) created a new way of shopping and living.

She opened her first boutique, Bazaar, in the Kings Road, in 1955. Her simple pinafores and shifts, often worn with coloured stockings, were a far cry from the wasp-waists and sweeping skirts of the New Look that had been dominating fashion. With the advent of the sixties, hemlines rose, hotpants appeared, and she experimented with new materials, such as synthetics and PVC.

Chelsea became a magnet for the trendy and beautiful. Her clothes made international headlines when they were worn by the supermodels of the day, including Twiggy and Jean Shrimpton, but although high fashion, they were affordable for the working woman. From 1961 to 1972 she designed collections for J.C. Penney, the biggest department store chain in the US, where she was seen as part of the “British Invasion” alongside pop stars such as the Beatles and the Rolling Stones.

In 1964 she delighted home sewers when her distinctive designs began appearing in Butterick pattern books, and in 1966 launched her first range of makeup with the iconic daisy motif and also, as part of the ‘total look’ designed plastic jewellery that was eyecatching and fun.

Conran, for his part, created a showcase for her wares with her second Bazaar store, which opened in upmarket Knightsbridge in 1957. It was unlike any other shop at the time: window displays were banished, so passersby could see everything that was going on inside. A central, free-floating staircase descended from the mezzanine floor, almost like a catwalk for customers and the staff, who always wore Quant creations. It was all part of Conran’s vision of bringing ‘the good life’ to the British public. In 1964 he opened Habitat, his lifestyle store, where duvets, chicken bricks, paper lampshades and wicker furniture appealed to young people enjoying the increasing availability of inexpensive package holidays abroad, while frequenting the trattorias and bistros springing up on UK high streets.

His multi-purpose light and stylish furniture did much to change attitudes to interior design. On display is a bed-settee from 1958 (above) and a knock-down storage range from 1962. Nearby is a 1960s House and Garden cover feature extolling ‘luxury one-roomed apartments – bed sitters on a budget’.

The exhibition incorporates roomsets where you can see how the designs of  Quant and Conran complemented each other. It also looks at the influence Italian Surrealist artist Piero Fornasetti had on him, and the early work of Laura and Bernard Ashley, whose ideas were making their mark on pop culture long before their iconic florals appeared. The simple, hardworking striped smocks, aprons and the easy to wear ‘basic dress’ they marketed (below) would go on to become design classics.

Altogether, an informative and rewarding look at a fashion era that still reverberates today. After all,  the mini never really went away, and Quant's trademark daisy remains instantly recognisable.

Swinging London: A lifestyle revolution. Fashion and Textile Museum, 83 Bermondsey St, London SE1 3XF. To June 2, 2019. Tickets £9.90 (concessions available) at ftmlondon.org.

The exhibition is accompanied by a learning programme that includes talks, events and workshops. Details on the museum’s website.