The glamour of the sixties has hit Auckland in an international exhibition at the Auckland Art Gallery exploring the work of legendary fashion designer Mary Quant.
She was an icon from the swinging sixties in London, with her chic bob and playful outfits Mary Quant tapped into a new aesthetic and revolutionised high street fashion. She made her clothes accessible around the globe, selling her patterns, mass producing her garments and making them affordable for everyone.
"Mary Quant had such a huge influence on fashion in Auckland the whole of Aotearoa it was really in the 1960s that we first start to see fashion designers in New Zealand who were part of the youth quake movement that Mary Quant instigated in London at the time emerging here with shops and boutiques opening just down the road in queen street," exhibition director, Kirsten Lacy, said.
The exhibition is the largest public collection of Quant's garments in the world with over 120 pieces on display along with accessories and cosmetics. But the Quant brand was so much more than just clothes, it was about redefining the traditional norms of what women should wear.
She popularised the mini skirt in the sixties despite the idea of showing the knee at the time was rather confrontational.
"She imagined the mini skirt as being an item of clothing that a young women could wear and run and catch one of the modern London busses so it was about liberation, it was about physical freedom and it was about sassiness," said senior curator Sophie Matthiesson.
The Peter Pan collars and the "wet look" also became synonymous with the Quant style.
"It was a look she created that she's entirely responsible for and its obviously about waterproof fabrics, the new plastics that are shiny gleaming in a sense they replace shiny and expensive silks," said Matthiesson.
Quant was a trailblazer who sought out to democratise fashion and this exhibition celebrates her influence on fashion through the decades.
The exhibition will be running till March 2022.
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