Mary Quant; V&A; May 2019: 10:10

This is a super show. I was in there for 2 1/2 hours!

Quant said that women’s clothes should be sexy, attract attention and be easy to wear.  I'm not sure that we'd see these clothes as sexy now but they would certainly still attract attention.  Comments from other visitors confirmed that they were fun and easy to wear.  Indeed most visitors seemed to be on a journey of nostalgia.  Something very noticeable about this show is that everyone is white: every model, every image, and almost every visitor.

At the entrance is the stunning dress Quant wore to collect her OBE - so cool, so simple, wow.  It's made of wool jersey with stitched lines around the hem.

The pared down designs that Quant designed are stunning. These dresses were expensive though at £500 a go in today’s money. At the time her clothes were very different from those of the Couture houses, they were very distinctive,

The show documents Quant's inspirations.  Many of those were male fashions and fabrics. She went so far as to give her clothes names like Bank of England.  Such a borrowing seems also to recognise a hierarchy, a sense then of a spurious male superiority, imitation being the greatest form of flattery.

Quant also borrowed from the Victorians and from the flapper style of the 1920's, she emphasises garment elements and created something that seems to have a completely individual and recognisable style. 

Quant talks constantly of making sexy clothes and this was certainly true of the The Wet Look - coats made from the new, sexy, PVC.  She had a super taste in colour.

Quant also talks about the clothes attracting attention, these are daring clothes.

Quant was featured in the first Sunday Times Colour Section. The Sunday Times magazine was a weekly revelation when I was a child.

Now we have learnt to hate plastic its striking to note that these clothes are overwhelmingly made of wool.  Even the raincapes are waterproofed cotton.

One caption entitled "GIRLS WILL BE BOYS" talks about here designs being childlike and androgynous.  Many of the clothes are based on the pinafore dress. This caption throws up another issue. Whilst these clothes do represent liberation, including sexual liberation, they are arguably infantilising - no-one really challenged the patriarchy in a mini-skirt. 

One thing not to be forgotten is that this was business, it  kicked off youth culture but youth culture was itself a business opportunity. It was about selling to youth who were starting to have more disposable income. Quant diversified and licensed her designs to leverage her influence and income.

The show doesn’t deal with the question of why Mary Quant has disappeared from our High Street. I suppose that it's a kind of unwinding of the reason why she appeared in the first place. Her garments captured the Zeitgeist but were then imprisoned by it.  Now they have been left behind by history whilst the Couture houses, always able to reinvent themselves, have survived and in a world of increasing inequality seem to be thriving. You could say that a couture designer like Alexander McQueen was infinitely more imaginative than Quant.

In the end this is a must see show.