Obituary: Mary Quant, legendary designer of the mini-skirt, dies aged 93

British fashion designer Mary Quant. Photo: Keystone/Getty Images

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“It wasn’t me or Courrèges who invented the mini-skirt – it was the girls in the street,” said Mary Quant of the revolutionary hemline she is widely credited with creating. The mini-skirt was launched on King’s Road and immortalised in the Swinging Sixties, with Quant putting its success down to genetics. “The Chelsea girl had the best legs in the world. She had the courage to wear it,” she said.

Despite it grabbing global press attention, not everyone was enamoured with the abbreviated skirt. Quant recalled how the stereotypical city gent, with his pinstriped suit and bowler hat, would beat Bazaar’s window with his brolly while shouting “Immoral!” and “Disgusting!”. Coco Chanel declared the mini-skirt “indecent”. When Sophia Loren publicly claimed it had “destroyed the feminine mystique”, Quant replied: “Well, she’s built the other way up.”