Dame Mary Quant.Photo: Mike Prior/Getty Images
Dame Mary Quant, known for popularizing short hemlines and penning the term “mini,” died Thursday. She was 93.
The designer “died peacefully at home in Surrey, UK, this morning,” her family said in a statement to PA Media, a news agency in the United Kingdom.
The statement added that she “was one of the most internationally recognized fashion designers of the 20th century and an outstanding innovator of the Swinging ’60s.”
Quant was born in 1934 in Blackheath, and attended Goldsmiths University, graduating in 1953. She later went on to open Bazaar, a trendy boutique in King’s Road in London. The store, featuring fashion-forward wares, was a favorite of The Rolling Stones and Audrey Hepburn and soon rose in popularity.
The fashion designer is credited with inventing the “mini” skirt — named after her favorite car, the Mini Cooper — hot pants, and popularizing mod style in the ’60s.
“I liked my skirts short because I wanted to run and catch the bus to get to work,” she told the PA in 2014, perThe Washington Post. “It was that feeling of freedom and liberation.”
She added, “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.’ "
Dame Mary Quant outside of her London shop, Bazaar.Cyril Maitland/Mirrorpix/Getty Images
In 1961, Quant opened a second Bazaar in Knightsbridge and a few years later, exported her mod looks to the United States in partnership with JCPenney.
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The designer moved into the beauty world in 1966, launching a makeup line calledMary Quant Cosmetics.
Quant penned several books, includingColourin 1984,Quant on Make-Upin 1986,Classic Make Up & Beauty Bookin 1996, and an autobiography,Mary Quant: Autobiography,in 2011.
“It’s impossible to overstate Quant’s contribution to fashion,“Britain’s Victoria and Albert Museum tweetedafter her death. “She represented the joyful freedom of 1960s fashion, and provided a new role model for young women.”
FormerVogueeditorAlexandra Shulman posted a tributeon social media, tweeting: “RIP Dame Mary Quant. A leader of fashion but also in female entrepreneurship - a visionary who was much more than a great haircut.”
“In the ’90s I used to bump into Ms. Quant in La Picena, a small Italian Deli on Walton Street. I recognised her immediately and on first meeting, I plucked up enough courage to say hello to her. I had been aware of her style, looks and spirit from my teenage years, so I felt that I was truly meeting a legend, someone who defined the spirit of the ’60s,” British fashion designer Bruce Oldfield toldWWD.
source: people.com
