: “The Look isn’t just the garments you wear. It’s the way you put your make-up on, the way you do your hair, the sort of stockings you choose, the way you walk and stand. I wanted girls to move, jump, be alive!” There’s still no better way to capture the phenomenal energy of the teenage fashion rebellion she led in the 1960s.
Writing in 1966, Quant was already famous world-wide as the leader of the revolution that had ushered in miniskirts and hot pants – the surge of British Mod pop-culture Diana Vreeland hailed as the “Youthquake”. In the same year,’s fashion journalist Felicity Green was reporting that “secretaries, students, and shop assistants were wearing skirts with hems only just below the bottom”. But Quant never took credit for inventing the mini.
In 1964, André Courrèges showed short skirts in his famous Space Age collection in Paris. The difference was it was haute couture, still slowly ordered fashion for the elite. In London, Quant’s creativity ran spontaneously hand-in-hand with the new socially democratic ready-to-wear, desires whipped up by the pop music of the Beatles and Rolling Stones, the weekly TV showhosted by Cathy McGowan, and dancing at clubs like the Ad Lib in Soho.