Mary Quant - Emily Sackett Graphic Design

Mary Quant
Mary Quant
Mary Quant
Book 9
1934-m
Page 3
THE BASICS
MARY QUANT BROUGHT FUN AND FANTASY
TO FASHION IN THE 1960S. THE CREATOR
OF THE MINI SKIRT AND HOT PANTS, SHE
SHOWED A GENERATION HOW TO DRESS
TO PLEASE THEMSELVES. HER INSTANT
SUCCESS MADE TRADITIONALLY CAUTIOUS
DESIGNERS CHANGE THEIR ATTITUDES
AND MAKE THEIR DESIGNS APPEAL TO THE
NEWLY IMPORTANT YOUTH MARKET.
BORN 04.11.1934
LONDON, ENGLAND
DIED
CAREER FASHION DESIGNER
Mary Quant
1934-m
THE BASICS
GOOD TASTE IS DEATH.
VULGARITY
IS
LIFE.
Book 9
Page 5
Mary Quant
1934-m
M
ary 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
EARLY LIFE
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
Book 9
Page 7
Mary Quant
1934-m
EARLY LIFE
Book 9
career. “It was made absolutely clear to both of
to go to Goldsmiths’, I would take the Art Teachers’
us from the start that we would have to earn our
Diploma.” With her parents’ qualified permission,
own livings,” she wrote. “My parents never even
Quant enrolled at Goldsmiths’ College of Art in
considered the possibility that marriage might be
London. Almost immediately she met Alexander
a way out for girls. I was made terribly aware that
Plunket Greene, who became her business partner
it was entirely my own responsibility to make a
and, later, husband. Her classmates, including
success of my life.”
Greene, were an education unto themselves, she
wrote. “It was only when I went to Goldsmiths’
Unfortunately, Quant’s idea of a career path
that, for the first time in my life, I realized that
didn’t quite match her parents’ expectations. They
there are people who give their lives to the
wanted her to choose a sturdy, practical vocation.
pursuit of pleasure and indulgence of every kind
“It was only with the greatest difficulty that I ever
in preference to work,” Quant marveled. “At first
persuaded them to allow me to go to art school,”
it was a shock even to me; to my parents, such
she related in Quant by Quant.
a thing was incomprehensible.” Quant spent
I GREW UP WANTING TO DESIGN CLOTHES. THE WHOLE
THING HIT ME AT A VERY EARLY AGE. IN FACT, I’M STILL IN
DISGRACE FOR CUTTING UP A BEDSPREAD WHEN I WAS ILL
WITH MEASLES, AGED SOMETHING LIKE SIX OR SEVEN.”
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. In an
“It was only when I managed to win a scholarship
interview in 1999, Mary Quant said: Mary was
to Goldsmiths’ that I was able to persuade them to
born in Blackheath, London, the daughter of two
agree to a compromise … if they would allow me
Welsh teachers. Like many children growing up in
Page 9
Mary Quant
1934-m
Book 9
London during World War II, she was evacuated
to the countryside to escape bombing strikes on
the capital. As a young woman Mary returned to
London to study art and illustration at Goldsmiths’
College. She was interested in colours and patterns
EARLY LIFE
and the ways in which they contrasted, merged
and balanced one another. After completing
her studies she took a job with a couture milliner.
This involved spending up to three days stitching
a single hat for one customer. Mary became
disillusioned with the state of the fashion industry
and felt passionately that style and design should
be available to everyone, not just the select
few who could afford to pay high prices for
hand-made, customized clothes. In 1955, Mary,
her partner Alexander Plunkett-Greene and
accountant Archie McNair opened Bazaar, one of
London’s first fashion boutiques on the Kings Road
in Chelsea. Mary had a gift for marketing and an
instinctive understanding of the needs and desires
of her customers. In an interview with American
Vogue, she described her shop as ‘a sophisticated
candy store for grown ups. I want women to come
in here and play with colour and have fun.’ Mary
Page 11
believed that fashion was the preserve of the
young and should promote a sense of freedom,
especially for women. In her autobiography she
wrote: ‘I had always wanted young people to
have a fashion of their own, absolutely twentieth
century.’ Within the first week of Bazaar’s opening,
the shop had taken five times as much money as
Mary had anticipated. She soon realized that its
success depended on stocking a large number
of different designs, and this inspired her to design
her own clothes to sell hey became a must-have
item for customers and Mary sold the design to
an American manufacturer who produced their
own version. Mary’s single sewing machine in
her London studio flat soon expanded into three
full-time machinists whom she employed to sew
her designs for Bazaar. Mary was not afraid of
novelty and experimentation. Some of her most
popular designs were sweater dresses with plastic
collars, balloon-style dresses, and knickerbockers
wrote: ‘It is given to a fortunate few to be born
Road. As Mary’s designs took off, mass-production
at the right time, in the right place, with the right
seemed the inevitable step forward, and in 1963
talents. In recent fashion there are three: Chanel,
she began exporting her designs to the US. This
Dior and Mary Quant.’ The 1960s were the right
was the start of a period of worldwide demand for
time for Mary. The decade was characterized by
her clothes. She set up the Ginger Group, which
the rise of youth culture in Britain. Young people
marketed her designs, and ‘Mary Quant’ became
of all classes had independence, employment
an international brand. Many of her designs were
and disposable incomes. Style and image were
bought by the American chain store J. c. Penney,
everything, visible on television, purchasable in
through which they were mass-produced and sold
shops, available to all. Glamour was no longer an
cheaply to a wide range of consumers. By 1966
elusive quality epitomized by heroes and heroines
Mary had also brought out a range of affordable
on the cinema screen: 1960s’ role models were
cosmetics bearing her trademark daisy logo. She
pop singers, models, sporting figures, television stars.
encouraged users to use make-up brushes for
If the 1960s was the right time, ‘Swinging London’
applying eyeliner and blusher to achieve the doe-
was the right place. Pop culture influenced what
eyed, hollow-cheeked look of top model Twiggy.
people wore as well as what they listened to. The
Of all Mary’s designs, the mini skirt is by far the most
trio who had established Bazaa were quick to spot
widely recognized and the one for which she is still
these new trends. ‘Fashion reflects what is really in
famed. Although Andre Courreges had modelled
the air,’ said Mary in an interview. ‘It reflects what
above-the knee couture designs in the early 1960s,
people are reading and thinking and listening to,
Mary’s designs were revolutionary: it was suddenly
and architecture, painting, attitudes to success and
acceptable and even - such was the power of
to society.’ In 1961 they opened a second store in
affordable fashion mandatory to show a lot of leg.
Knightsbridge, which enjoyed the same levels of
Some commentators saw the innovation in terms
plastic lace-up boots, tight sweaters in bold striped
or check patterns and plastic raincoats. These
clothes became part of the ‘London Look’ and
Mary Quant became synonymous with trendiness.
EARLY LIFE
ALIVE
TODAY.
Other typical designs included knee-length white
1934-m
IT IS A PART OF BEING
influential fashion writers of the twentieth century,
and stretch stockings in all colours and patterns.
Mary Quant
FASHION IS NOT FRIVOLOUS.
Ernestine Carter, one of the most authoritative and
success and profit as the original shop on the Kings
Book 9
Page 13
Mary Quant
1934-m
Book 9
of female liberation - women could now move
easily instead of being hampered by long skirts and
underskirts. ‘The fundamentals of fashion remain
the same. Women wear clothes to feel good and
to feel sexy. Women turn themselves on. Men like
EARLY LIFE
to look at women to be turned onto feel sexy is to
know you’re alive.’ For the first time clothes were
being designed to uncover the body rather than
dress it and the public consequences were farreaching. With the introduction of hot pants in 1969,
Mary took the skirt hem as high as it could go and
took shorts out of the school gym, but by the end
of the decade her designs had lost their popularity.
Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, she concentrated
on the household goods and cosmetics side of
Mary Quant, eventually selling the company to a
Japanese consortium in 2000. Although she is no
longer associated with the brand name, its success
rests on her enduring reputation as a fashion
innovator. In 1966 Mary was awarded the OBE for
her outstanding contribution to the fashion industry.
She accepted the award in her inimitable style,
arriving at Buckingham Palace in a micro-mini skirt
and black cut-out gloves.
Page 15
Mary Quant
1934-m
M
eanwhile, 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
CAREER
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."
Book 9
Page 21
Mary Quant
1934-m
Book 9
Quant quickly discovered that manufacturers
had first been planned, it had been looked upon
weren't making the kinds of clothes she wanted to
purely as a promotional idea," she disclosed in
sell, so she set up her own manufacturing outfit in
Quant by Quant. The store's managers decided to
her apartment, hiring a dressmaker to come during
stick with Quant as they watched sales soar.
the day and help. Quant herself sewed dresses at
CAREER
night to sell the next day in the shop. "I had to sell
With the flood of Quant designs came a change in
one day's output before I had the money to go out
the way women dress. "Fashion had always been
and buy more material," she recalled, noting that
dictated from above, by Parisian couturiers and
at first, "I didn't think of myself as a designer. I just
other authorities," wrote William L. O'Neill in Coming
knew that I wanted to concentrate on finding the
Apart: An Informal History of America in the 1960s.
right clothes for the young to wear and the right
Fashion "was a monopoly of the rich. But in the
accessories to go with them."
sixties it was the young, and relatively unknown
designers like Quant and Gernreich who catered
Struggling to make ends meet and suffering
to them, who set the pace.… Not since the 1920s
ridicule from the press and some passers-by, Quant
had women's clothing changed so radically. No
persevered. In less than ten years, her clothing
one could remember when the flow of fashion had
designs was world famous, selling in 150 shops
been reversed on such a scale." Quant herself, in
in Britain, 320 stores in the United States, and
her autobiography, echoed the same sentiment.
throughout the world: France, Italy, Switzerland,
"There was a time when clothes were a sure sign of
Kenya, South Africa, Australia, Canada, and more.
a woman's social position and income group. Not
She needn’t have worried. Suddenly available on
now," she wrote in 1966. "Snobbery has gone out
a mass scale, the "mod" look took the fashion world
of fashion, and in our shops you will find duchesses
by storm. "I really believe that when the whole thing
jostling with typists to buy the same dress."
Page 23
THE FASHIONABLE WOMAN WEARS CLOTHES.
THE CLOTHES
DON'T
WEAR HER.
Mary Quant
1934-m
Book 9
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
CAREER
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 mid1990s, 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.
Page 25
Mary Quant
Book 9
1934-m
Page 27
CAREER
FASHION, AS WE KNEW IT, WAS OVER; PEOPLE WEAR
NOW EXACTLY WHAT THEY FEEL LIKE WEARING.
WOMEN BREAKING BARRIERS