WHO is Mary Quant

Hi, I'm Amanda Jane Woodall and welcome to my fashion school, so in this series we look at the history of British fashion and the icons that inspired today's modern style. We will discover one of the pioneers of The Swinging 60s, inventive, opinionated and business-minded, is Mary Quant. Barbara Mary Kwon was born on February 11, 1934 and grew up in Heath London, her parents were both from Welsh mining communities and both became teachers and Mary always wanted to sew and design because she was very inspired by dancers and their costumes, but to her Her parents didn't really like the idea, so she went to university to study to be an art teacher.

He attended Goldsmiths College London and it was here that he became heavily involved in the beatnik community of the 1950s and this was a group of artists, designers and models who were fed up with the conservatism of British tradition while studying for their art diploma. Mary also attended pattern making classes at night school and this was because she really wanted to put her own identity into making clothes. and when she finished her diploma she went to work in Eric's hat shop, which was a very poorly paid job, which meant she couldn't always afford essential things like food and she was already small, only about five feet tall and She also developed a very slim body which would become a great aspiration for women of that time, in the mid 50's there was a rebellious teenage movement in Britain that really began to change popular culture and Mary made clothes as a reaction to what what was happening in his life.

She really liked the girls from Chelsea, the fashionable girls in London and she thought they had great legs and she wanted to make clothes that showed them off. Mary had met the love of her life at university and this was Alexander Plunkett Green and without her support maybe Mary's life. He would have gone in a different direction because he bought a property on Kings Road and converted the basement into a restaurant giving Mary the other part of the property which they turned into a fashion boutique called Bazaar and Bizarro opened its doors to the public in 1955 and This is seen as one of the most important moments of 20th century fashion in this Boutique.

Mary had created a new vision of shopping so that the fashion lovers who came to the store could buy everything, they could buy their accessories and they could buy their clothes and she chose everything in one store and Mary had total creative control, so who made sure that all the clothes coordinated with each other, which gave it a really very stylish look. This coordinated style of dressing attracted wealthy London fashionistas who would actually come and spend around 75% of their salaries. In terms of clothing, these garments were a step away from the drab colors and rigid tailoring of traditional British clothing.

Mary Quant had noticed that, although the fabric was flat, women's bodies were actually round, so she began making garments that were tubular and round so that they really gave a smooth silhouette. I would buy my fabrics at Harrods and then use the money from the sales of the clothes to include them in the next collection, so it was a very hands-on job and I didn't really know anything about wholesaling or working with manufacturers or suppliers, these clothes It was done to bridge the gap between childhood and womanhood, as previously boys had grown up and dressed exactly like their mothers, but now, with the development of adolescence and rock and roll, people wanted to wear clothes that fit them. made him stand out from his parents.

The designs were youthful and featured childlike symbols. She bought clean lines, geometric shapes, and hemlines of skirts that reached above the knee, and Mary Quant is credited with naming these skirts after her; She named the miniskirts after her favorite car, the Mini, but Mary had a rival in creating hers. of the miniskirt because Andre Carriegas had also shown a collection of space-themed skirts that also reached above the knee and when asked in an interview, Mary Quant said that it was not Corregas or I who invented the miniskirt, it was the girls from the street that made it Fashion historians maintain that the actual rise of the miniskirt was a gradual process that was introduced to couturiers during the 1950s and 1960s as a replacement for the very full skirts of the early 1950s and there are also evidence of miniskirts as already in 4700 BC.

C. in Europe and in Egypt, however, what Mary certainly pioneered was the London style and this was a coordinated outfit with monochrome colors, matching geometric shapes and was adopted by Britain's mod supporter and also by the model Twiggy. adopted this style, it wasn't long before American shoppers began to desire these fashions, so JCPenney purchased Mary Quant's licensed products in 1962 and they appeared in 1,700 of its stores, so now Mary Quant was seen world scale. Designs became more inventive as the 1960s progressed and she is credited with inventing many new things in clothing design and retail, pioneering the wet look in 1962, which was a collection of garments made from High gloss PVC and this took about two years.

Perfect, she also changed the style from heels to boots and made a pair of boots that had a zipper closure feature so you could change them from knee height to ankle height and also change the color of the calf piece. Quant had a keen eye for visual branding. and created the brand logo with an A5 petal flower and this was something he used to draw while designing to get his ideas flowing and his partner saw the opportunity to incorporate the store name on the shopping bags and this meant that the customers were actually advertising the brand became traveling billboards in 1966, she received an honor from the queen, who was an Obe for her services to fashion design, as well as many other accolades, such as being named woman of the year by the Sunday Times and be included in the Fashion Council Hall. of fame Mary stopped manufacturing in 1970, but continued to design and run the company until its sale in the 2000s.

Mary Quant products continued to be manufactured and produced in Japan and sold around the world and, whatever happened to the miniskirt The Humble, continues their long association. With femininity and women's liberation to this day, an activist group labeled as hippies saw a shift from the mini to the hemmed maxi skirt in the 1970s being the longest it had been seen from 1914 to 1974. , when alternative rock star Debbie Harry of Blondie wore a tight leather miniskirt that sets the pulse racing again ten years later we see Madonna, known for her sensuality, walking around the MTV stage wearing a mini wedding dress and singing how She's like a virgin in the '90s.

Julia Roberts' performance in Pretty Woman saw her become decadent and beautiful going from Lady of the Night to Lady by simply ditching the miniskirt and buying tall boots and the miniskirt went to extremes in the decade. 2000's when we saw pop stars and rich socialites fall out of nightclubs exposing their bellies and legs and now the mini is adopted by many different subcultures and many different styles and is a symbol of body confidence, non-conformity of gender and our obsession with nostalgia, a 70-year-old journey that still generates debate, fun, lost joy and controversy, not bad for a small tube. of fabric, so we have reached the end of this video.

I will see you again in my next video where I will look again at The Swinging 60s and the people who made it, I saw many other artists and artist designers in this