Mary Quant Lives On

Granddaughter playing dress up, thank you Mary Quant.

The headlines read "MARY QUANT, MASTERMIND OF SWINGING '60'S STYLE, DIES" 

London (AP) Mary Quant, the visionary fashion designer whose colorful, sexy mini-skirts epitomized London in the 1960's and influenced youth culture around the world has died. She was 93. (Norman Transcript, Sunday, April 16, 2023) 

.... Some compared her impact on fashion world with The Beatles' impact on pop music. 

Mary Quant definitely made an impact on me and my mother-in-law (at the time), master seamstress, Rose Rains. Just like Mary designed clothes at the right time, I, too, became Rose's daughter-in-law at the right time of fashion.  Shortly after I married her son, Don, she wrote me a letter asking me to give her my body sizes, according to her description.  I could sew, but not without a pattern. Rose could create her own pattern. I had to ask around in those days to find out exactly what Rose wanted measured and then my neighbor helped me fill out Rose's request.

My first few outfits, hand made for me, were Nehru suits with high neck collars like the Beatles wore. I felt fashionable for the first time in my life. 

That was followed by yellow plaid patterned "Elephant Pants." She had taught me on a trip back to Miami how to match plaids and lines. Not an easy task for someone who likes to see the end in sight early in the project.

Quant, who named her new skirt after her favorite make of car, the Mini, recalled how it offered a 'feeling of freedom and liberation." From her shop on King's Road in London's trendy Chelsea neighborhood, she was part of a clothing revolution. "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." She said, "I wore them very short and the customers would say, 'shorter, shorter.'"

By the time we moved back to Miami in the 1970's Mary Quant's mini-skirts were popular from one coast to the next, even in Oklahoma. Rose designed and sewed, mini-dresses for me, with matching underwear.  I worked at the public library by now and couldn't afford to look sexy or like I was showing anything personal!

Asked by the Guardian newspaper in 1967 if her clothes could be considered "vulgar" because they were so revealing, Quant replied that she loved vulgarity and embraced it. 

Her clothes became wildly popular and were worn by models such as Twiggy and Pattie Boyd, who was then married to Beatles guitarist George Harrison. 

"Snobbery has gone out of fashion, and in our shops you will find duchesses jostling with typists to buy the same dress." Quant once said. She called her shop "a sophisticated candy store for grown-ups." 

Mary Quant was correct. Wearing the newest styles made me feel like a grown-up, and my body was young and trim. 

After the decade of the 1970's, I kept only one outfit from those years, and have cherished those memories each time I clean or rearrange my closet and find the one bedazzling Beatle-mania-mini-skirt/dress that Rose made for me one New Year's.  wore it a few times and then covered it in plastic and hung it in my closest, as I moved around in my life. 

One day two years ago (when Murphy was a puppy), our granddaughter, Ruth Ann wanted to play dress-up and I said go for it. We pulled out a few old costumes and then found the bedazzling mini still wrapped in cleaners plastic. I ripped off the plastic and set the dress on the bed.  Before long Ruth Ann had brought Mary Quant back to life. For over an hour she wore that dress and played with jewelry and hats from my stash of fun clothing.  I know she enjoyed the day, but I think I enjoyed it even more.

I still can't keep my eyes off the dress and the length it is on her as opposed to the length it showed on me. All smiles....

Vintage clothing from Etsy  plaid Elephant pant

Nehru jackets from Etsy

Mini-skirts 1960's

The Bell Bottom Story

Born: February 11, 1930, Blackheath, London, United Kingdom

Died: April 13, 2023, Surrey, United Kingdom

***  I only wish I had had a camera to take photos of my daughter, Katy, when she wore my mini's as a child.