Mary Quant

Fashion designer Dame Mary Quant (1930-2023) from London was part of the ‘Swinging Sixties’ cultural shake-up in the UK. She pioneered the wearing of mini skirts, hot pants, coloured tights, PVC, skinny-rib jumpers and ‘bob’ haircuts in a freer, more relaxed and fun style of fashion.

She opened her first two London boutiques as early as 1955 and 1957 and they were so successful that the USA and Europe came calling just a few years later. She started to win awards and her business greatly expanded, including a cosmetics line which began in 1966. That decade saw her at the top of her industry. In the 1970s she again diverged into a new field, that of interior design. In 2015 she was made a Dame for her services to British fashion.

(Top images LtoR: Anthony O’Neil at geograph.org.uk / CC BY-SA 2.0 & David Merrett at Flickr.com / CC BY 2.0)