Fashion Icon Mary Quant

Mary Quant is the fashion designer most credited with creating the London-based Mod movement of the sixties.  This is quite relevant still today as so much of today’s retro movement in fashion is based on the mod looks she invented for such figures as Twiggy, Jean Shrimpton and Marianne Faithful..  This was also known as the Chelsea Girl look.

Even at age 77  Mary Quant still makes media appearances and sports the bob she made famous so many years ago. The Bob is a short ear length doo with long bangs that is parted high at the crown.  One of the most famous photographs in the fashion world is Vidal Sassoon giving Mary quant her famous short haircut.

Quant also helped make the mini-skirt popular and created the skinny rib sweater that most of us still wear to day.  She also invented waterproof haircut and invented hot pants. Hot pants, for those of you who do not remember, was a one pieces pantsuit that was short sleeved and ended with shorts.  Sometimes the hot pants were worn with heels and tights but many people wore them as cool, comfortable and very sexy summer outfits

Mary Quant also revolutionized women’s cosmetics.  She invented “pearly crayons” which were crayons sold in a make up tin that came in all kinds of beautiful violets, yellows, greens and limes

Quant also pioneered what she called “the bare essentials for the bare look.”  This was a pale foundation that was accompanies by white lipstick or see through pale pink lip glosses. The main emphasizes of the look was on the eyes that were heaped with eye shadow, eyeliner and false eyelashes.  The eyebrows were also very thin. Almost vacant.

One contentious side of this fashion icon is her insistence that women can never be too thin. She maintains that it is the bones of the woman that make the dresses look wonderful: “the bones must jut out in the right place.

Quant says she has been on a diet since 1962 and that she stays slim by living on a diet of black coffee, tomatoes, avocados, basil and olive oil because you can eat as much as you want of those foods and not get fat. This of course is not so politically correct now but back then it was crucial you were stick thin or you would not be able to wear any of her youthquaker style clothes.