Cover image of the review
Mary Quant, *Victorian-Style Two-Piece*, 1961. Cotton with broderie anglaise trimming Labelled ‘Mary Quant’ Lent by Fashion Museum Bath / Gift of Mary Quant Photo: Michelle Guo

Mary Quant: Fashion Revolutionary


22 May 2021
Bendigo Art Gallery 20 Mar - 11 Jul 2021

Mary Quant’s London was the final exhibition to be staged by the London Museum at Kensington Palace between November 1973 and September 1974. The Quant retrospective represented a last hurrah and the first step towards modernising the museum, which had previously only exhibited historical costume. (The London Museum subsequently merged with the Guildhall Museum, moved to the Barbican complex and was rebranded as the Museum of London.) It was touted as the “first major museum exhibition to explore the work of a single, living fashion designer” and “only the second museum exhibition in London ever to be devoted to contemporary fashion”.

Mary Quant’s name is inextricably synonymous with the 60s and mod fashion—a fact that led to her immense but temporally-bound cultural influence. The brand was still active when London Museum staged their retrospective, prompting the New York Times headline ‘Already, a Mary Quant Retrospective’.

From the very start of the Sixties I could see myself at 75 on television telling people about that time. It was the time of my time. I will never have so much fun again, ever.
– Michael Caine

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