Fashion designer Dame Mary Quant, the designer widely credited for inventing the mini skirt and pioneering Swinging Sixties style, has died aged 93. A statement issued by her family on Thursday (13 April) said Quant “died peacefully at home in Surrey, UK this morning”.
“Dame Mary, aged 93, was one of the most internationally recognised fashion designers of the 20th century and an outstanding innovator of the Swinging Sixties.”
Quant was known for pioneering the high hemlines that were made popular during a decade of cultural and social revolution in the UK. The official Twitter account of the Victoria & Albert Museum, which recently hosted an exhibition about Dame Mary Quant‘s designs, shared a tribute that said it was “hard to overstate” the impact Quant had on the fashion world.
As a green horned journalist in the early 1990’s I had the privilege of interviewing Mary at the time she was launching her cosmetic lines which resulted in a truly global brand but she was also launching hosiery and was enthusiastic in all her projects. A true advocate of the power of black opaque tights!!
She was a self-taught designer and attended evening classes on pattern cutting to make her extraordinary vision come to life. Despite being one of my first ‘big interviews’ she was gracious and humorous in the extreme, modest and down-to-earth – one of a kind.
Pamela Scott, Managing Editor
