MARY QUANT’s success came from being the empathetic, inspired, daughter of two first class honours graduates from 1930s Modernist Cardiff University. She also could not find clothes she liked for herself in 1950s London!
When I met her colleague, David Wynne Morgan, (Hill & Knowlton) in 2008, before he started to talk about MQ he said one word, “Genius.” So I was well tee’d up to write, ‘Mary Quant and the JC Penney blockbuster.’ “Fashion, Media, Promotion,” 2009.
Mary Quant fascinates people as people fascinated Mary Quant. Fashion feeds from her fervour, her love of fun and clothes. The industry admired her because she understood its strategies. Yet it was the British Post Office, which signalled her greatness; putting a little black dress on one of a series of stamps, celebrating 50 years of Modern design in 2009. No one was more surprised than Mary Quant when she found herself in the company of celebrated 20th century Modernists.
Successful at the promotion of Fashion, like Westwood coming from Art and not Couture, she was seen as innovator rather than designer. She refused to take credit for the mini-skirt, knowing it was, partly, from the street and that everyone, including André Courréges, was hacking away at hemlines in the Sixties. It is the impulse towards Modernism, which gave her the power to transform lives through Fashion; its optimism informed her biography and continued to inspire her thinking.
Cinema Fashionista 