Mary Quant, the visionary fashion designer whose colorful, sexy miniskirts epitomized London in the 1960s and influenced youth culture around the world, has died. She was 93.
Quant's family said she died "peacefully at home" in Surrey, southern England, on Thursday.
Quant was perfectly positioned to capitalize on the "youthquake" of the 1960s. She sensed that the days of exclusive salons were numbered, and thought that even the great Parisian designers would follow ready-to-wear trends. Whether or not she was the first to design them, it was Quant who figured out how to market miniskirts to the masses.
"She blasted through barriers of snobbery and tradition, with her vision of fashion as a way of resisting stereotypes, with well-made clothes and cosmetics that were empowering and liberating, as well as affordable," said Jenny Lister, who curated a 2020 exhibition devoted to Quant at London's VictoriaShe shot to the top of the fashion scene at the time when The Beatles and Rolling Stones dominated the music world, and she was forever linked to the heady freedoms of the 1960s.
Born Feb. 11, 1930, the daughter of schoolteachers, Quant studied art education at Goldsmith's College in London before moving into fashion, working first as an apprentice to a hat-maker before trying her own designs. The shop was such a success that she soon moved into other parts of London and began exporting her clothes to the United States, where the "British invasion" was in full swing.
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