Something about Mary
“I ORIGINALLY APPROACHED the V&A about the idea of a book, but it wasn’t very long before I thought: ‘Gosh, this has got to be an exhibition as well,’” says Heather Tilbury, Mary Quant’s former director and head of marketing from the late 1960s through to the 1970s.
What followed was an almost five-year gestation period of bringing the exhibition to life with the curators at London’s Victoria & Albert Museum. It also involved a call-out to the general public seeking photographs and garments, which received an overwhelming 1,000 responses. “It was just exhilarating and thrilling,” says Tilbury of the reaction. “It meant contacting people from a lifetime before, some of whom had been models or journalists.”
The V&A team found clothes from, features more than 110 garments as well as accessories, cosmetics, sketches, photographs and the designer’s own line of fashion dolls. It wasn’t simply a slice of amazing fashion history that was revealed through the process, but also Mary Quant’s legacy of groundbreaking, timeless clothes. A zip-front mini-dress that in the 60s was future-forward, today feels right and relevant. Quant wasn’t just part of an era, she defined the era in the vanguard of social change. As she said in an interview from the late 60s: “Fashion is for now.”
