Few phenomena have represented the radical and unstoppable change of customs as the London explosion of youthquake in the Sixties – so Diana Vreeland renamed it, electrified by everything innovative happening in Swinging London. It was at that moment that the pendulum swung, and young people began to catalyze attention and claim their place as protagonists, representing what was progressive happening in society.
They were young people who no longer thought of themselves as miniature adults, who didn’t want to dress like their parents, who didn’t necessarily belong to the upper echelons of the social ladder. Indeed, they were proudly working class, and could enjoy a freedom unheard of at the time: the pill gave everyone other ways and other priorities.
To this liberated generation, Mary Quant, who passed away today at the age of 93, first gave miniskirts, then hot pants, always in bright colours. It was certainly not she who invented the microscopic skirts – many, in Paris as in London or Los Angeles, aimed for them – but it was certainly she who called them mini, like cars, and made them in synthetic and practical materials that also made them quite accessible – there is no real revolution if only the wealthy can afford clothes.
He had a great nose for business, for what today would be called marketing but which in his case was a form of communicative creativity. From what was a small shop in Chelsea, Bazaar, he built a strong empire of numerous cosmetics licenses – one, seminal, is still active. With Mary Quant, and the wild bunch that created the myth of London, a melting pot of unstoppable innovation, which includes Ossie Clark, Mick Jagger and the Rolling Stones, Mr Fish, Barbara Hulanicki and the indispensable Twiggy and Jane Shrimpton, not to mention David Bailey , an authentic legend is gone, guided by the optimism of imagining tomorrow without nostalgia and without barriers, for everyone.
He certainly knew how to do business, but with the electrifying ingenuity of a moment that really, by now, is history, because progress is unstoppable, for better or for worse.