Legendary fashion icon dies aged 93
Fashion designer Dame Mary Quant has died aged 93
PA
Fashion designer Dame Mary Quant has died aged 93, her family has announced.
The British fashion icon, who was widely credited with popularising the mini skirt, died peacefully at her home in Surrey on Thursday morning.
She was one of the most influential figures in the fashion scene of the 1960s and is credited with making fashion accessible to the masses with her sleek, streamlined and vibrant designs.
A statement released on behalf of her family said: “Dame Mary Quant died peacefully at home in Surrey, UK, this morning.
Models present fashion by designer Mary Quant in London
PA
“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.
“She opened her first shop Bazaar in the Kings Road in 1955 and her far sighted and creative talents quickly established a unique contribution to British fashion.”
Born in south-east London on February 11 1930, Dame Mary was the daughter of two Welsh school teachers.
She gained a diploma in the 1950s in art education at Goldsmiths College, where she met her husband Alexander Plunket Greene, who later helped establish her brand.
Dame Mary was taken on as an apprentice to a milliner before making her own clothes and in 1955 opened Bazaar, a boutique on the Kings Road in Chelsea.
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’.”
One of the models modelling Mary Quant designs in London
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She was made a dame for services to British fashion in the Queen’s New Year list in 2014 and was appointed a member of the Order of the Companions of Honour in the most recent New Year Honours list.
Alexandra Shulman, former editor-in-chief of British Vogue, described the designer as a “visionary”.
She wrote 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.”
A tribute posted on the Victoria and Albert Museum official Twitter account read: “It’s impossible to overstate Quant’s contribution to fashion.
“She represented the joyful freedom of 1960s fashion, and provided a new role model for young women.
“Fashion today owes so much to her trailblazing vision.”
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