Mary Quant: A woman who completed women and the youth culture
During the 1960s, although Great Britain was referred as the empire on which the sun never sets, the nation itself was too busy in replicating and imitating culture and arts of France. Even the young nation, United States had the victory of seizing hegemony right after World War 2, which hurt the Great Britain’s pride. Not only the nation itself but also the people of Great Britain desperately wanted something “British-like,” something of their own.
Furthermore, the social issues for wanting individualism, having a will to express their own selves, and second wave of feminism, more liberated life styles for women, erupted across the Western countries. New definitions of youth and femininity were epitomized through fashion typically created by Mary Quant, a British fashion designer. She had not only helped translating a generation of women, but also helped the failing British fashion industry into a thriving commercialism. Mary Quant was born in London, 1934. She studied illustration at Goldsmith College of Art and met her future husband, Alexander Plunket Greene and a former solicitor,
Archie Mcnair. When she failed to become an art teacher, she teamed up with her husband and Mcnair to open up a boutique called Bazaar in Kings Road, London. In the beginning, she planned to buy clothes from the private wholesalers and sell it as retail items at her boutique, but with the limited designs, which only provided styles that weren’t acceptable to women at young ages, and unfavorable prices offered by those wholesalers, she started designing her own clothes. She wanted to provide lines with reasonable prices to reach to the young markets.
However, Quant had difficulties in persuading the customers to like her funky and unique but unusual designs at first.
Quant’s designs were usually simple and youthful where women were able to move freely. Through her philosophy in comfortable clothing, she had attributed in introducing a skirt of which the hemline was set 6 or 7 inches above the knee into the fashion scene. She named this very short skirt as “miniskirt,” derived from her favorite make of car, the Mini. In addition to the miniskirts, she also invented the colored and patterned tights that tended to accompany the garment. These designs were viewed as controversial when it first came into the market, but with the rise of the young teenagers, they began to accept her style in the mid 1960s.
She has not only revolutionized the fashion industry, but also the feminist movement of the 1960s. With the rise of the second-wave feminism in the 1960s, Quant’s designs became more popular among the young teenaged girls. Quant knew how to satisfy these youth who were craving and seeking for something new in fashion as restrictions of women reduced. Although women had won over their legal equality through the first-wave feminism after World War 1, there were still many women who faced unfair treatments in their everyday lives. Eventually, miniskirt was viewed as sign of women’s liberation from the traditional social structures for young women.
Quant’s attributions of knee-high skirt, hot pants, patent plastic vinyl jacket, lace-up boots, skinny rib sweaters in stripes and bold checks became to be known as the “Chelsea Look.” And this Chelsea look paved a way for different and liberal fashionable items for women. In 1966, she created the brightly colored “paint box” makeup sets and expanded her business by adding a cosmetic line. Quant always wanted to contribute her liberal ideas to other women, so she made “be free, be yourself” as mission statement for her cosmetic business. Through her unlimited curiosity and experimental ideas to enhance female beauty, she had also invented the waterproof mascara. With the help of her husband’s creative marketing ideas, the packaging and the name of a certain makeup line were creatively marketed. A range of gel cosmetics was named as Jelly
Babies and was sold in tiny baby bottles.
Quant is also known for her teamwork with Vidal
Sassoon, a British hairdresser who revolutionized and influenced many liberating ideas that transformed women’s lives in the Sixties. Like Mary Quant, Vidal Sassoon propelled for women to wear their hairstyle as they pleased.
The invention of Quant’s cut off skirts and Vidal Sassoon’s invention of bob and five-point cut collaborated well together in freeing women from the social tyranny of the sixties. These contributions influenced many Hollywood and
British celebrities to adopt the new trend. In addition to this new trend, a model name Lesley Lawson or more widely known nickname Twiggy became a prominent fashion icon who influenced many young women to walk around the street with this new trend and attitude of confidence.
In the late 1950s and early 1960s, only the French fashion industry received the spotlight worldwide. The rise of Christian Dior and Coco Chanel’s high-end fashion appealed to many upper-class women. Due to the French
Haute-couture designers, British fashion industry had not been a successful industry. However, Quant revolutionized the British fashion industry through her miniskirts. People began to notice British fashion through Quant. As her business had succeeded, she opened up a second store of
Bazaar in another location in London and also exported her clothes to the Unites States and other European countries.
As a woman during the sixties, she had thrived as a true entrepreneur. Eventually, Quant’s creative inventions, which were viewed as controversial in the beginning, appointed her as the first winner of the Dress of the Year award in 1963. In 1966, she was appointed as the Officer of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire, or OBE for her outstanding contribution to the British fashion industry. The era 1960s are viewed as the revolutionary era; a time of turning point for the British Empire and the fashion industry. Unlike the French designer Coco Chanel’s appeal of luxury items to the upper class women, Mary Quant focused on creating street styles for the young girls.
Often, Quant would tell the media that the girls at the
Kings Road created the miniskirt instead of her being the creator. She has never feared in facing new challenges, but helped many women to be liberal from the old custom and taboos. Quant is credited for completing women’s beauty and youth culture through expressionism. Mary Quant was the real revolutionist of the 1960s.