Mary quant net worth

Mary Quant

British fashion designer and fashion icon (–)

Dame

Mary Quant

CH DBE FCSD RDI

Quant in

Born

Barbara Mary Quant


()11 February

Woolwich, London, England

Died13 April () (aged&#;93)

Surrey, England

Other&#;namesBarbara Mary Plunket Greene[1]
EducationGoldsmiths College
LabelMary Quant
Spouse

Alexander Plunket Greene

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(m.&#;; died&#;)&#;
Children1

Dame Barbara Mary QuantCH DBE FCSD RDI (11 February – 13 April ) was a British fashion designer and icon.[2][3] She became an instrumental figure in the s London-based Mod and youth fashion movements, and played a prominent role in London's Swinging Sixties culture.[2][4][5] She was one of the designers who took credit for the miniskirt and hotpants.[6][7]Ernestine Carter[8] wrote: "It is given to a fortunate few to be born at the right time, in the right place, with the right talents.

In recent fashion there are three: Chanel, Dior, and Mary Quant."[9]

Early life

Barbara Mary Quant was born on 11 February [10][notes 1] in Woolwich, London, the daughter of Jack Quant and Mildred Jones. Her parents, who both came from Welsh mining families, had received scholarships to a grammar school and had been awarded first-class honours degrees at Cardiff University before moving to London to work as schoolteachers.[11][12] She had a younger brother, John Antony Quant (who became a dental officer in the Royal Air Force), with whom she was evacuated to Kent during the Second World War.[11]

Quant attended Blackheath High School.

For college, her desire had been to study fashion; however, her parents dissuaded her from that course of study, and she instead studied illustration and art education at Goldsmiths College for which she received a degree in In pursuit of her love for fashion, after finishing her degree, she was apprenticed to Erik Braagaard, a high-class Mayfairmilliner on Brook Street next door to Claridge's Hotel.[12][13][14]

Fashion career

Quant was introduced to Archie McNair, who owned a photography business on the King's Road, through a mutual friend.

He and Alexander Plunket worked with Quant to purchase Markham House, the shopfront that would be the location of her clothing boutique, Bazaar. The two men both contributed financially to the project, and Markham House was purchased for £8, During the renovation, Quant worked to locate wholesale suppliers, with a salary of £5 per week.[15] Once the shop opened, Quant initially sold clothing sourced from wholesalers in her new boutique in the King's Road.

Mary quant son: In , Quant set up a shop called Bazaar just off the King's Road in London's Chelsea area, where she sold a range of clothes and accessories. Save this story Save. Related topics. Young women travelled to Bazaar to enjoy shopping for 'something different' in a much less formal environment.

The bolder pieces in her collection started garnering more attention from media like Harper's Bazaar, and an American manufacturer purchased some of her dress designs.[16] Because of this attention and her personal love for these bolder styles, she decided to take designs into her own hands.

Initially working solo, she was soon employing a handful of machinists; by she was working with a total of 18 manufacturers. A self-taught designer inspired by the culture-forward "Chelsea Set" of artists and socialites, Quant's designs were riskier than standard styles of the time.[17] Quant's designs revolutionised fashion from the utilitarian wartime standard of the late s to the energy of the s and s' cultural shifts.

She stocked her own original items in an array of colours and patterns, such as colourful tights.[18]

Quant's impact did not just come from her unique designs; in her boutique she created a special environment, including music, drinks, and long hours that appealed to young adults.[19] This environment was unique for the industry, as it differentiated from the stale department stores and inaccessible high-class designer store environments that had a hold of the fashion market.[17] Her window displays with models in quirky poses brought a lot of attention to her boutique, where people would often stop to stare at the eccentric displays.

She stated that "Within 10 days, we hardly had a piece of the original merchandise left."[18]

For a while in the late s and early s, Quant was one of only two London-based high-class designers consistently offering youthful clothes for young people.[20][21] The other was Kiki Byrne, who opened her boutique on the King's Road in direct competition with Quant.[22]

In , Quant was named one of the "fashion revolutionaries" in New York by Women's Wear Daily, alongside Edie Sedgwick, Tiger Morse, Pierre Cardin, Paco Rabanne, Rudi Gernreich, André Courrèges, Emanuel Ungaro, Yves Saint Laurent and Baby Jane Holzer.[23]

Quant and the miniskirt

The miniskirt, described as one of the defining fashions of the s,[24] is one of the garments most widely associated with Quant.

While she is often cited as the inventor of the style, this claim has been challenged by others. Marit Allen, a contemporary fashion journalist and editor of the influential "Young Ideas" pages for UK Vogue, firmly stated that another British fashion designer, John Bates, rather than Quant or André Courrèges, was the original creator of the miniskirt.[25] Others credit Courrèges with the invention of the style.[26]

However, skirts had been getting shorter since the s, and had reached the knee by the early sixties, but "Quant wanted them higher so they would be less restricting—they allowed women to run for a bus and were much, much sexier".[27]

Quant later said: "It was the girls on the King's Road [during the "Swinging London" scene] who invented the miniskirt.

I was making easy, youthful, simple clothes, in which you could move, in which you could run and jump and we would make them the length the customer wanted. I wore them very short and the customers would say, 'Shorter, shorter.'"[12] She gave the miniskirt its name, after her favourite make of car, the Mini,[28] and said of its wearers: "They are curiously feminine, but their femininity lies in their attitude rather than in their appearance She enjoys being noticed, but wittily.

She is lively—positive—opinionated."[29] The fashion model Twiggy popularised the miniskirt abroad.[30]

In addition to the miniskirt, Quant is often credited with inventing the coloured and patterned tights that tended to accompany the garment, although their creation is also attributed to the Spanish couturier Cristóbal Balenciaga, who offered harlequin-patterned tights in ,[26][31] or to John Bates.[32][failed verification]

Later career

In the late s, Quant offered miniskirts that were the forerunner of hotpants and became a British fashion icon.[33][34][35] In she designed berets in twelve colours for British headwear company Kangol.[17] Quant's berets, featuring her daisy logo, are in her collection at the Victoria and Albert Museum.[17] Through the s and s she concentrated on household goods and make-up rather than just her clothing lines, including the duvet, which she claimed to have invented.[14]

Classic Mary Quant dresses exhibited at the Goodwood Revival motor racing festival in England

In , Quant designed the interior of the Mini () Designer (originally dubbed the Mini Quant, the name was changed when popularity charts were set against having Quant's name on the car).

It featured black-and-white striped seats with red trimming. The seatbelts were red, and the driving and passenger seats had Quant's signature on the upper left quadrant. The steering-wheel had Quant's signature daisy and the bonnet badge had "Mary Quant" written over the signature name. The headlight housings, wheel arches, door handles and bumpers were all "nimbus grey", rather than the more common chrome or black finishes.

Two thousand were released in the UK on 15 June , and a number were also released on to foreign markets; however, the numbers for these are hard to come by. The special edition Mini came in two body colours, jet black and diamond white.[30]

In , she resigned as director of Mary Quant Ltd, her cosmetics company, after a Japanese buy-out.[36] There are more than Mary Quant Colour shops in Japan.[36]

Personal life

Quant met her future husband and business partner, Alexander Plunket Greene, grandson of the Irish singer Harry Plunket Greene, in [14] They were married from until his death in ,[37] and had a son, Orlando, born in [38]

Quant died at home in Surrey on 13 April , aged [38][39]

Honours and recognition

"She was the godmother of the youth movement in fashion, the first to realise that how women dressed needed to change."

—Jenny Lister, curator of textiles and fashion at the V&A[30]

In , Quant was the first winner of the Dress of the Year award.

In the Birthday Honours she was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE).[40] She arrived at Buckingham Palace to accept the award in a cream wool jersey minidress with blue facings.[41] In she won the Hall of Fame Award of the British Fashion Council.

She was appointed Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE) in the New Year Honours for services to British fashion.[42][43] She was appointed Member of the Order of the Companions of Honour (CH) in the New Year Honours for services to fashion.[1][44]

Quant received an honorary doctorate from Heriot-Watt University in [45] In , the miniskirt designed by Quant was selected by the Royal Mail for their "British Design Classics" commemorative postage stamp issue.[46] In , she was among the British cultural icons selected by artist Sir Peter Blake to appear in a new version of his most famous artwork – the Beatles' Sgt.

Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band album cover – to celebrate the British cultural figures of his lifetime.[47]

Quant was a fellow of the Chartered Society of Designers, and winner of the Minerva Medal, the society's highest award.[48]

Bibliography

  • Quant, Mary; Green, Felicity ().

    Colour by Quant. Treasure. ISBN&#;.

  • Quant, Mary; Barrymore, Maureen; King, Dave (). Classic Make-up & Beauty. DK Living Series. DK Pub. ISBN&#;.
  • Quant, Mary (). Quant by Quant: The Autobiography of Mary Quant. Harry N. Abrams. ISBN&#;.[49]
  • Quant, Mary ().

    Ultimate Make-up & Beauty. Firefly Books, Limited. ISBN&#;.

  • Quant, Mary (). Mary Quant Autobiography. Headline. ISBN&#;.

See also

  • Daisy, doll designed by Quant

Notes

  1. ^The Mary Quant exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum in –20 stated her year of birth as , and that she became a student at Goldsmiths College around However, the sleeve to her own autobiography () gives the year as , a date that has been widely cited over the years.

    Obituaries in April seemed universally to have accepted that she was 93 when she died: in other words, that she was born on 11 February

References

  1. ^ ab"No. ". The London Gazette (Supplement). 31 December p.&#;N6.
  2. ^ abHo, Karen (3 July ).

    "The Brit List: Five Great British Fashion Designers". BBC America. Archived from the original on 5 July Retrieved 16 October

  3. ^"New Year Honours: Designer Mary Quant among Welsh recipients". BBC News. 30 December Archived from the original on 4 January Retrieved 9 January
  4. ^Do Je-Hae (10 October ).

    "Mary Quant, British Fashion Icon". The Korea Times. Archived from the original on 29 October Retrieved 16 October

  5. ^Muir, Ellie (13 April ). "Mary Quant death: Designer who pioneered Swinging Sixties fashion dies aged 93". The Independent. Archived from the original on 14 April Retrieved 14 April
  6. ^McKinnell, Joyce ().

    Beauty. Harper Collins. p.&#; ISBN&#;.

  7. Mary quant online shop
  8. What is mary quant famous for
  9. Mary quant designs images
  10. Mary quant designs

    11. Archived from the original on 11 November Retrieved 25 September

  11. ^" trouser suit by Mary Quant". Victoria and Albert Museum. 18 August Archived from the original on 29 October Retrieved 12 July
  12. ^Burman, Barbara (). "Carter [née Fantl], Ernestine Marie (–), museum curator and writer on fashion".

    Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online&#;ed.).

  14. Mary Quant, mastermind of Swinging ‘60s style, dies at 93

  15. Oxford University Press. doi/ref:odnb/ Retrieved 20 January (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)

  16. ^Connikie, Yvonne (). Fashion of a Decade. Infobase Publishing. p.&#; ISBN&#;.
  17. ^"Mary Quant – Clothes, Miniskirt & Fashion". 3 June Archived from the original on 13 April Retrieved 13 April
  18. ^ ab"Mary Quant: Mother of the miniskirt".

    The Independent. 13 April Archived from the original on 13 April Retrieved 20 January

  19. ^ abcPolan, Brenda; Tredre, Roger (). The Great Fashion Designer. New York: Berg. pp.&#;– ISBN&#;.
  20. ^"Mary Quant".

    Victoria and Albert Museum website. Victoria and Albert Museum. Archived from the original on 14 September Retrieved 24 February

  21. ^ abcArmstrong, Lisa (17 February ). "Mary Quant: 'You have to work at staying slim – but it's worth it'".

    Mary quant london designer Collections Post-war design Explore. She met her future husband and business partner, Alexander Plunket Greene, at Goldsmiths. Mary Quant was born and brought up in Blackheath, London, the daughter of two Welsh schoolteachers. Young women travelled to Bazaar to enjoy shopping for 'something different' in a much less formal environment.

    The Daily Telegraph. Archived from the original on 6 December Retrieved 17 October

  22. ^Quant, Mary (25 September ). Quant by Quant. V & A Publishing. ISBN&#;.
  23. ^DelaHaye, Amy (). Steele, Valerie (ed.). The Berg Companion to Fashion.

    Oxford: Berg. pp.&#;– ISBN&#;.

  24. ^ abcd"Berets: Mary Quant (designer)". V&A collections. Archived from the original on 2 October Retrieved 2 October
  25. ^ ab"Mary Quant: How She Fought for Women's Rights With Colourful Tights".

    Bloom.

    Mary Quant: Biography, Fashion Designer, Miniskirt Originator A design and retail pioneer, she popularised super-high hemlines and other irreverent looks that were critical to the development of the 'Swinging Sixties' scene. Quant had another distinct advantage over previous designers: She was a contemporary of her clients, rather than of an older generation. In she was awarded an OBE for her contribution to fashion. She was also one of the first celebrity designers who built a brand around her name.

    Archived from the original on 2 October Retrieved 2 October

  26. ^Nicolson, Juliet (11 February ). "Mary Quant: Life, love and liberty". Harper's BAZAAR. Retrieved 7 December
  27. ^Denza, Vanessa. "Interview with Vanessa Denza MBE". Victoria and Albert Museum. Archived from the original on 17 June Retrieved 2 June
  28. ^Waddell, Gavin ().

    How fashion works: couture, ready-to-wear, and mass production (Online-Ausg.&#;ed.). Oxford, UK: Blackwell Science. p.&#; ISBN&#;.

  29. ^O'Byrne, Robert (). Style city: how London became a fashion capital. London: Frances Lincoln. p.&#; ISBN&#;.
  30. ^"Revolution In Fashion Reaction In New York: These Were The Revolutionaries".

    Women's Wear Daily. Vol.&#;, no.&#; 14 April pp.&#;4–5. ProQuest&#;

  31. ^Horton, Ros; Simmons, Sally (). Women Who Changed the World. Quercus. p.&#; ISBN&#;.
  32. ^"Garments worn by Marit Allen". Victoria and Albert Museum. Archived from the original on 2 August Retrieved 12 July
  33. ^ abCartner-Morley, Jess (2 December ).

    "Chelsea girl who instigated a new era". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 11 December Retrieved 12 July

  34. ^Miles, Barry (). The British Invasion: The Music, the Times, the Era. Sterling Publishing Company, Inc. p.&#; ISBN&#;.
  35. ^Miles, Barry (). The British Invasion: The Music, the Times, the Era.

    Sterling Publishing Company, Inc. p.&#; ISBN&#;.

  36. ^Seebohm, Caroline (19 July ).

    Mary quant london shop Immortalized by fashion iconography as the originator of the miniskirt, Dame Mary Quant had an art school background and began designing and manufacturing her own clothes in the late s. More about this exhibition. Save this story Save. While he handled the business, her pioneering genius was for what we now call merchandising, brand extension, and fashion communication.

    "English Girls in New York: They Don't Go Home Again". New York. p.&#; Retrieved 6 January

  37. ^ abc"Mary Quant: The designer who launched a fashion revolution". The Courier. Archived from the original on 2 October Retrieved 2 October
  38. ^Carter, Ernestine ().

    The Changing World of Fashion: to the Present. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson. p.&#; ISBN&#;.

  39. ^Lester, Richard (). John Bates: Fashion Designer. Woodbridge, Suffolk, UK: ACC Editions.

    Mary quant london store Image source, Alamy Stock Photo. Unlike the more structured clothes still popular with couturiers, Quant wanted "relaxed clothes suited to the actions of normal life". Image source, Alamy. In , Plunket Greene purchased Markham House on the King's Road in Chelsea, London, an area frequented by the 'Chelsea Set' — a group of young artists, film directors and socialites interested in exploring new ways of living — and dressing.

    p.&#; ISBN&#;. OCLC&#;

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  41. ^Hillary Alexander (9 January ). "Fashion designer Mary Quant to have design included on Royal Mail stamps". The Daily Telegraph. London, UK.

    Archived from the original on 23 December Retrieved 9 July

  42. ^Milford-Cottam, Daniel (). Fashion in the s. Shire Publications. pp.&#;16– ISBN&#;.
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    The Guardian. Archived from the original on 11 December Retrieved 12 July

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  46. ^"Dame Mary Quant: Fashion designer dies aged 93". BBC News. 13 April Archived from the original on 13 April Retrieved 13 April
  47. ^UK list: "No. ". The London Gazette (Supplement).

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  48. ^"O.B.E. Dress by Mary Quant". Victoria and Albert Museum. 18 August Archived from the original on 5 May Retrieved 12 July
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  50. ^ New Year Honours ListArchived 2 January at the Wayback Machine, Government of the United Kingdom.

    Retrieved 31 December

  51. ^"New Year Honours Brian May and Lionesses on list". BBC News. 30 December Archived from the original on 30 December Retrieved 30 December
  52. ^"Annual Review &#;: People, Honours and Awards". . Archived from the original on 13 April Retrieved 30 March
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  54. ^"New faces on Sgt Pepper album cover for artist Peter Blake's 80th birthday". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 5 November Retrieved 5 November
  55. ^"These were the days that shook the world".

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  56. ^Green, Penelope (13 April ). "Mary Quant, British Fashion Revolutionary, Dies at 93". The New York Times. ISSN&#; Archived from the original on 13 April Retrieved 13 April

Further reading

External links