Fashion

From Miniskirts To "Booby Traps", What To Expect From The V&A's Blockbuster Mary Quant Exhibition


On April 6, the V&A will launch the first retrospective of Mary Quant’s designs in more than 50 years. Set across the museum’s fashion galleries, it features 120 garments and countless accessories – with thigh-grazing miniskirts; plastic-moulded shoes; PVC raincoats; glittering tights; and flowery jumpsuits all competing for visitors’ attention. Just as interesting as the clothes themselves, however, is the empowering message behind them. “Quant embodied the spirit of female liberation that defined the 1960s,” co-curator Stephanie Wood tells Vogue. “It felt totally natural – and necessary – to revisit her contribution to history in our post-Weinstein world.”

The exhibition itself is a fitting tribute to a young Welsh girl who built a powerhouse brand from scratch – effectively creating the modern high street. A quick history lesson: In 1955, a 21-year-old Quant opened her first boutique Bazaar on the King’s Road with her husband and business partner Alexander Plunkett Green. Initially sourcing a “bouillabaisse” of clothes from other brands, her eventual frustration with staid postwar fashions led her to make her own designs. Within a matter of years, she had launched a second boutique in southwest London; produced a major diffusion line known as Ginger Group; and created her own distinctive packaging – including her trademark daisy logo, a perfect visual representation of the Youthquake. By the end of the 1970s, she had expanded into cosmetics, homewares, and toys – achieving global retail domination in the process.

Courtesy of The Advertising Archives

Arranged in loosely chronological order, Mary Quant charts this meteoric rise, from displays of Quant’s early work for the Chelsea set through to a panoramic installation of daisy-branded merchandise. Notably, while the V&A boasts the largest collection of Quant’s designs in the world, much of the exhibition is made up of beloved clothes sent in by female members of the public – each shown alongside a personal anecdote. Among the hundreds of pieces discovered through the museum’s “We Want Quant” campaign? A square-necked coral blouse bought directly from the window of Bazaar. “Given that there’s no label inside, it’s likely that this was actually one of the pieces that Quant made by hand in her bedsit before she turned into a household name,” Wood explains. “She used to go to Harrods every morning and stitch dresses out of their Butterick patterns.”

Image Courtesy of The Victoria and Albert Museum, London

As you move through the exhibition, Quant’s designs become notably more sophisticated – and deliberately controversial. A row of immaculately dressed mannequins highlight how Quant gradually raised hemlines over the years to create her legendary miniskirt. She also took pleasure in subverting gender norms – regularly using fabrics intended for gentlemen’s suits, sporting attire, or military uniforms. Plunkett Greene would then name each style she created after a typically masculine figure or establishment, from Lord Byron to the Bank of England. Included in a first-floor display case titled “Borrowing from the Boys”, for example, is a cardigan dress known as the Rex Harrison. Harrison famously played the patriarchal Henry Higgins in the 1964 film adaptation of My Fair Lady – wearing innumerable cardigans for the role.

An even more direct form of rebellion was Quant’s choice to don trousers at a historical moment when restaurants would often turn female customers away for wearing them. (Don’t miss the ones she designed, known as the Alexander stripe, at the exhibition – one of few surviving pairs.) She likewise advocated wearing tracksuits – as modelled by Twiggy in the pages of Vogue, where then fashion editor Marit Allen declared them “lighter than light”. Quant’s designs were also the final nail in the coffin for restrictive undergarments – although she did have a penchant for shapewear. One of the highlights of Mary Quant is a quirky collection of bras (referred to as “booby traps”) and knickers beside a quote from her memoir: “Foundation garments needn’t be surgical. Get a birthday suit and be your own sweet self (minus six pounds).”

For the fashion nerds, her radical use of materials is also considered in depth. There’s a section dedicated to her first collection in polyvinyl chloride (PVC), known as the Wet collection and presented at the Hôtel de Crillon in Paris in the spring of 1963. A bright red fisherman’s hat and coat from the presentation became the first Mary Quant items to make the cover of British Vogue for the magazine’s October 1963 issue. Upstairs, meanwhile, there’s a full display of terrycloth and velour pieces. Quant discovered the fabrics in 1967, claiming that both could take dye “like boiled sweets”, and using them to produce bright clothes that afforded freedom of movement, like loungewear and bodysuits. A particularly glorious fashion editorial from the now-defunct Honey magazine shows a young Grace Coddington dancing in a towelled playsuit.

Ernestine Carter Archive, Fashion Museum Bath

More than an exercise in fashion – or feminist – history, however, Mary Quant is just… fun. There are endless Daisy dolls – Quant’s jet-setting answer to Barbie, which came with miniature versions of her designs (the “best-dressed doll in the world”). There’s a Mabel Lucie Atwell sketchbook that Quant filled with outfit ideas when she was just 14-years-old. There are even American advertisements using cockney slang: “Hey Luv! Mary’s Here!” At its best, it feels like stepping back in time to the King’s Road of the Sixties – a welcome respite from this slightly-less-joyful historical moment. As former Quant employee Kevin Roberts says in the exhibition catalogue, “Mary Quant created something much bigger than a brand. She created a movement. A movement of freedom, confidence, fun and optimism. A movement of hope and liberation.” And who wouldn’t want to be a part of that?





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