IDOL FRIDAY: Mary Quant

It's been 60 years since Mary Quant opened her first boutique, Bazaar, on Kings Road so I thought she would be the perfect choice for this weeks Idol Friday.  She brought fun to fashion by bringing us the mini skirt and hot pants in the 1960s and her use of bold and colourful fabrics has been a big inspiration to me personally.

Quant, 81 last week, started making clothes as a little girl, cutting up bedspreads or any other bits of fabric she could find at home. Eventually she managed to persuade her parents, probably bored of late night raids on the linen cupboard, to send her to Goldsmith's College of Art in London. This is where she met and fell in love with her husband, Alexander Plunket Greene.

When Greene inherited £5000 on his 21st birthday, they teamed up with fellow student and photographer, Archie McNair, and went into business together. In 1955 they rented Markham House  - a three storey building with a restaurant, Alexanders, in the basement and a boutique on the first floor. And so the first Bazaar was born.

Quant started out by purchasing stock for the shop but soon had the frustrating realization that she couldn't find the youthful styles that she was craving for. Never one to be defeated, she started making her own designs and hired a dressmaker to work through the day whilst Quant worked through the night, making sure she had made enough stock to sell in the shop the next day. From the late 1950's she had been experimenting with shorter hemlines, leading to the creation of the miniskirt in 1964. Quant herself would go on to admit that she didn't think it was solely her creation, more a reaction to the demand of the Kings Rd. girls that would visit the shop.

Quant was one of the first designers to bring affordable fashion to the high-street. Before, to keep up with fashion trends, you would either have to visit a couture house or rip a page out of a magazine and take it to a dressmaker. It's easy to see why her simple and clean cut dresses were popular with the London girls of the 60's! The shorter hemlines allowed it's wearer to have more freedom to move and were designed with running for a bus in mind.  Just two years after opening her first shop, she had a team of machinists working for her and was busy opening a second branch in swanky Knightsbridge, with a layout designed by Terence Conran. 

Raincoats from the 'Wet Collection'

In 1962, she entered the American market with J.C Penny and soon enough she was selling her clothes worldwide in over 150 shops. Quant's popular designs gave girls a chance to embrace a fun, affordable and youth defining look. Her bold colours and usage of fun materials was a breath of fresh air from the drab and boring fabrics left by years of war rationing.

When discovering PVC, Quant put together a whole range called the 'Wet Collection', first shown in Paris, 1963. Working with this new fabric was a steep learning curve, taking her 2 years to work out how to effectively use the material and perfecting issues like bonding the sleeves successfully. It was fabulous for making raincoats and she would sew white PVC peter pan collars onto mini dresses giving them a futurist look.

By the Seventies and Eighties, Quant was using her design skills to make other creations. She was the first designer to commercialise tights, as well as an early pioneer for designer cosmetics. Her line of make-up boomed in Japan and was eventually bought by a Japanese company in 2000. She had wonderful opportunities to put her unique style into a number of things such as the chic air hostess uniforms for Court Line Aviation in 1972. I wish uniforms looked like this today. I used to work as cabin crew years ago for Excel Airlines and my uniform was SO boring compared to this!

She also collaborated with Mini Cooper, designing the interior of the Mini Quant in 1988. The car featured black and white striped seats with red trimming, along with red seat belts. The steering wheel also had her signature daisy logo in the center. Just 2000 of this very limited edition were released in total in the UK. 

Quant's determination and creativeness has been an enormous influence on me. I've always admired her ability to put her hand to new things and always make something singular, unique. She went to art college to study illustration, but became one of the biggest names in the fashion industry. Her eye for trends, persistence and dedication over the last 60 years has had a massive role in shaping the fashion world as it is today. From short hemlines to tiny cars, the girls done it all. 

Thank you Mary Quant :)

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