Spotlight, 17 September 2019

Ahead of being honoured with a Lifetime Achievement Award, a plaque celebrating Dame Mary Quant was unveiled at 138A King’s Road on 16 September, the original site of her ground-breaking boutique Bazaar, which embodied a new generation’s attitude to life and fashion, bringing energy and fun to shopping.

Mary Quant revolutionised fashion, harnessing youth, street style and mass production to create a new look for women, defining the Swinging Sixties. Challenging conventions, she popularised tights, hot pants, the mini skirt and trousers. The plaque unveiling coincided with London Fashion Week, Dame Mary’s ‘Lifetime Achievement’ at the World Fashion Awards and a major international retrospective exploring her influential career at the V&A museum, just a short walk from the King’s Road, which brings to life how she injected positivity and colour back to a post-war London. The bonanza of an exhibition traces Quant’s career from 1955 to 1975, exploring the evolution of her style, and how her clever marketing created a global lifestyle brand. The show runs until 16 February 2020.

“Chelsea ceased to be a small part of London; it became international; its name interpreted a way of living and a way of dressing” – Mary Quant