Mary Quant: Swinging Sixties fashion icon dies, aged 93

13 April 2023, 13:18 | Updated: 13 April 2023, 13:38

Mary Quant
Mary Quant. Picture: Getty

By Tom Eames

Fashion designer Dame Mary Quant has died aged 93, her family have said.

A statement from her family said she “died peacefully at home in Surrey, UK this morning”.

It added: “Dame Mary was one of the most internationally recognised fashion designers of the 20th century and an outstanding innovator of the Swinging Sixties.”

Dame Mary has been credited with designing the iconic mini-skirts that helped define the Swinging Sixties.

She was an instrumental figure in the London-based Mod scene of the 1960s, and youth fashion movements of the time.

Quant was also one of the designers who has been credited for hotpants.

Mary Quant Working with Perfumes
Mary Quant Working with Perfumes. Picture: Getty

Born in south-east London on in 1930, Dame Mary was the daughter of two Welsh school teachers.

She earned a diploma in the 1950s in art education at Goldsmiths College, where she met her husband Alexander Plunket Greene.

Dame Mary later made her own clothes, and in 1955 opened Bazaar, a boutique on Kings Road in Chelsea that would become a fashion mecca.