QUANT, Dame (Barbara) Mary CH DBE (Mrs Alexander PLUNKET GREENE) 1930-2023
Richard R
Obit in the Times of 14 April 2023:
E X T R A C T
Dame Mary Quant, fashion designer, dies aged 93
On the morning in 1955 that Mary Quant opened the door of Bazaar, her new fashion shop on the Kings Road, City gentlemen in bowler hats banged on the window with umbrellas shouting “Immoral!” and “Disgusting!” Yet within a week she had sold so much stock that the shelves were stripped bare.
…Instantly recognisable with her wide kohl-rimmed eyes and sharp auburn bob (cut by her friend Vidal Sassoon), Quant was in fact deeply shy and softly spoken. Labelled an upstart by the British press, she once admitted that criticism hurt her; but with the help of Alexander Plunket Greene (often known as APG), her aristocratic husband who funded the business with a friend, she became a human logo for Bazaar…
…By 1965, she was designing 18 collections a year that were being mass produced and sold around the world. The Times reported: “Mary Quant has changed the look of London: she has more radical influence on modern living than any other fashion designer in history.”
When, a year later, she was appointed OBE, Quant described getting lost in Buckingham Palace with Harold Pinter, who was “gonged” on the same day. She was still only 36.
Barbara Mary Quant was born in 1930 in London. She was often asked if it was her real name (it was); from a young age she had refused to answer to “Barbara” and instead went by Mary. Her parents, Jack and Mildred, both from Welsh mining towns, were teachers in Blackheath, southeast London. They instilled a stern work ethic in Mary and her brother, Tony.
For decades she preserved a secret about her true age, according to Heather Tilbury Phillips, who joined Quant’s company in the late Sixties. “When Mary first met Alexander she was four years older than him. She was marrying into what was an upper-class family and she was considered a shop girl. They were very welcoming, but eyebrows were raised at Alexander’s choice. She didn’t want to put pressure on the situation, so she chopped four years off her age and her birth date was quoted for decades as 1934 instead of 1930.”
…At a fancy dress ball she met APG [Alexander PLUNKET GREENE]. “Life as I know it now began for me when I first saw Plunket,” she said. Dressed in his mother’s gold silk pyjamas and burgundy hipster drainpipes, he was “a 6ft 2in prototype for Mick Jagger and Paul McCartney rolled into one”, she said. He recalled experiencing “a surge of lust” the first time he saw her. Despite their differences in height and backgrounds, they were inseparable until his death from pancreatic disease in 1990. He encouraged her to be daring. “Let’s be bad,” he would say…
….When, aged 21, Plunket Greene inherited £5,000, and suggested to an entrepreneur friend, Archie McNair, that they went into partnership, it was the beginning of Bazaar…
…She commuted to New York every month. Once she came down with a terrible fever and had to be sent ice cream every hour in her hotel room as she worked on her collection. She became so famous that on a trip to Italy students rocked her limousine and tried to grab her, shouting “Ave Maria”…
…After suffering a miscarriage in 1970, Quant, aged 40, gave birth to their son, Orlando. She recalled that she calmly waited for APG to finish a meat pie before she announced that she was going into labour, and they grabbed a bottle of champagne on the way to the hospital…
…Then, in 1988, Plunket Greene was told that he had two years to live. Quant was beginning to wind down her empire, which had been overtaken in Britain by Laura Ashley, and nursed him. “I have never stopped loving him,” she said after his death.
She later shared her life with the former broadcaster, Antony Rouse, who had been a friend of APG. Rouse came to see her one day and “just stayed”, until his death in 2014…
Dame Mary Quant CH, fashion designer, was born on February 11, 1930. She died on April 13, 2023, aged 93
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/dame-mary-quant-fashion-designer-dies-aged-93-gnqmpw7ft