Swinging 60s icon brought a sense of female liberty to her designs
to two schoolteachers in south London in 1930, the designer graduated from Goldsmiths in 1953, the year of Queen Elizabeth’s coronation.in 1955, just a year after rationing had ended. Finally emerging from the horrors of the second world war, the capital was in search of a new energy – and Quant had it in spades. She knew instinctively that a new generation wanted to break from history, to live differently from their parents. And she knew that a new attitude needed a new wardrobe.
She was not the type of fashion designer to cloister in an ivory tower, sketching fantastical creations in tulle. Instead, she enthused that a short skirt and opaque tights enabled a girl to run for a bus. In her 1966 autobiography she described fashion as “a tool to compete in life outside the home”.Photograph: Mirrorpix/Getty Images
With Bazaar, she brought a youth quake to fashion, all zippy modern lines and bold colours. In Quant’s own words, her modus operandi was “to not wait for couturiers to imitate what rich people wore in Paris”, as designers traditionally did, but to follow her own instincts for what she and her friends wanted to wear. She broke with the strict gender segregation that ruled fashion of the era by making longline men’s cardigans into short women’s dresses.
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