Mary Quant (centre foreground) launches her 1967 footwear collection

Last year, while staff at the V&A were researching its major retrospective of Mary Quant, which opens next month, they launched a #WeWantQuant campaign, appealing to the public for clothes they might be willing to loan or donate. “We were overwhelmed,” the show’s co-curator, Jenny Lister, recalls: “We had more than a thousand emails from women – some friends of Quant’s and members of the bohemian circle to which she belonged – but most were ordinary women. Former students, teachers and nurses – some got in touch with us from as far afield as San Francisco and Australia.” One woman – and this makes Lister laugh with delight – described taking her Quant dress to Antarctica, to wear at the south pole. Some have hung on to their makeup (such as the eyeshadows Quant’s husband and business partner, Alexander Plunket Greene, jauntily dubbed “jeepers peepers”). The collective message was that Quant’s clothes were more than just clothes, they were cherished clues to the past. In the end, the museum could only make space for the offerings of 30 women (four of whom are interviewed below). But for everyone who lived through the Quant era, this show will be a form of time travel – back to the 60s and 70s and the coolest of surnames (that Q had kudos) and the simple daisy logo that kept on blossoming.

In a new foreword to her first autobiography, Quant by Quant (1966), Mary Quant remembers: “Life was a whizz! It was such fun and unexpectedly wonderful despite, or perhaps because of its intensity… we were so fortunate with our enormous luck and timing. We partied too – there were no real boundaries.” Her written style – ingenue enthusiasm – matched her clothes. For Quant, fashion was “a game” and her son, Orlando, (writing In the V&A’s catalogue) acknowledges the fun his parents had after they met as art students at Goldsmiths. He remembers how his father made life “riotously exciting”. He recalls people saying: “But Mary, you can’t do that…” (an invitation to go ahead). He also argues that his mother’s designs were more serious than her modest account of them, that they brought about an “attitude revolution that changed much more than fashion”.

At 89, Quant still sticks to her original line. “I loved wearing the clothes which I designed for like-minded friends and for myself,” she tells me by email. “They reflected the sense of freedom that we felt at the time – shorter skirts allowed mobility, to run, jump and to have fun in. As I get bored quickly, I was always seeking fresh inspirations so if they worked on me, then they would provide fashion for everyone who enjoyed the styling, the crazy accessories and the cosmetics.”

Lister emphasises Quant’s prescience: “She used clothes to demonstrate that change was coming. Fashion was no longer about couture, it was about expressing individuality.”

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