Ms. Quant opened her first boutique, Bazaar, on London’s King’s Road in 1955. The shop soon became a gathering place for young people in Chelsea, attracting celebrities including Audrey Hepburn and the Beatles while serving as a launchpad for Ms. Quant’s sleek and joyous designs, including the miniskirt.
While short skirts had existed long before Ms. Quant began designing hers with an above-the-knee hemline, she was credited with turning the miniskirt into an international phenomenon, even as other designers — notably André Courrèges of France — claimed to have invented it themselves.
“I liked my skirts short because I wanted to run and catch the bus to get to work,” she told the PA in 2014. “It was that feeling of freedom and liberation.” Still, she added, “it was the girls on King’s Road who invented the mini. I was making clothes which would let you run and dance, and we would make them the length the customer wanted. I wore them very short and the customers would say, ‘Shorter, shorter.’”
Ms. Quant also experimented with polka dots and unconventional fabrics, designed a skinny-rib sweater and PVC rainwear, branched into cosmetics and stockings, and helped popularize the short shorts known as hot pants. She became a fashion icon in her own right with her distinctive bob haircut, styled by her friend Vidal Sassoon, and was awarded an OBE in 1966, for which she arrived at Buckingham Palace wearing a bright, untraditional wool jersey dress.
In 2015, she was appointed a dame commander by Queen Elizabeth II.
“It’s impossible to overstate Quant’s contribution to fashion,” Britain’s Victoria and Albert Museum tweeted after her death. “She represented the joyful freedom of 1960s fashion, and provided a new role model for young women.”
A complete obituary will be published soon.
