Skitzo And Starkers From Mary Quant

Press, Volume CV, Issue 31041, 22 April 1966, Page 2

Skitzo And Starkers From Mary Quant

Mary- Quant, a British dress designer, expects to increase her firm’s turn-over by more than £1 million this year. The 32-year-old stylist, whose clothes sell in 25 countries, has now gone into the cosmetics business.

Even the “Financial Times’’ gave her new project its blessing and estimated that the new venture should make considerable inroads into the cosmetic-buy-ing habits of Britain's three-and-a-half million young women—a market that could yield about £24 million a year.

Among some of the new products of Mary Quant are a two-tone lipstick called Skitzo, and a nude foundation called Stackers. She is only producing two colours of nail varnish, but these will mix to make a third. “It’s cheaper,” she says, “to make only a few varieties, and modern girls don’t want a vast range of colours to choose from.” Her husband, Alexander Plunket Greene, aged 32, a director of the firm, estimates that its turn-over will rise from £2| million last year to £3f million this year. Mary Quant is the daughter of a poor Welsh schoolteacher. She worked in a millinery shop 10 years ago. “When I was young," she says, “I had a rich cousin who would pass to me her old clothes. They were fussy and frilly and looked completely wrong on me. I grew up in a state of continual embarrassment because of the way I dressed.” While she was studying at art school she met her husband. a nephew of the Duke

of Bedford, and they established a business together. Plunket Greene paid out all the money he had, about £5OOO, to buy a shop in Chelsea which they stocked with skirts and sweaters in off-beat colours. They were sold out in a fortnight. “I had two old women working for me in my flat above a coffee bar at the time,” she says. “I used to give them ideas and they used to make them up for me. Often they thought these ideas sounded pretty odd, but they usually liked them when they saw the end result.” Mary Quant’s clothes were a complete revolution in the fashion world. Her philosophy behind her new look in clothes was: “Today’s women are tough and independent. They need clothes that reflect this.” Of modern girls generally she says: “It’s a question of attitude that makes them important and different. They conform to their own set of values and not to a set of values laid down by an older generation. The age group of MaryQuant’s buyers generally ranges from 18 to 28. Is she, at 32, getting too old for her

own type of clothes? She does not think so. “No woman needs to be visually middle-aged these days. The way to look older is to wear out-of-date clothes. Why give the game away? Some of my choicest customers are past 40,” she says. (All Rights Reserved)