Farewell to Dame Mary Quant: Family and friends gather for memorial service of Brit fashion icon who pioneered block-colour tights, PVC and Vidal Sassoon’s bob haircut – after her death aged 93
The family and friends of Dame Mary Quant gathered for a memorial service for the British fashion icon after her death aged 93.
Dame Mary, who passed away at her home in Surrey on April 13 this year, pioneered block-colour tights, PVC and Vidal Sassoon’s bob haircut – wishing to add ‘a touch of fun and colour into people’s lives’.
A memorial service for the queen of Swinging Sixties fashion took place at 3pm today at The Chapel Royal Hampton Court Palace in Molesey.
Guests in attendance included fellow British designer Jasper Conran, 63, a friend of Dame Mary who described her as ‘one of the most important British designers ever’ following her death.
Mr Conran, who has worked on collections of womenswear, looked stylish as he attended the memorial in white trousers, a dark suit jacket, a stripy top and red neckerchief.
Other guests nodded to the late designer’s love of colour and fun as they wore bright clothing and quirky accessories, with one woman sporting a black cherry headband.
Dame Mary had planned her funeral more than a decade ago and wanted her ashes scattered in the garden of the Surrey home she shared with her beloved late husband, MailOnline previously revealed.
The icon said that her great friend Vidal Sassoon’s funeral at St Paul’s Cathedral had been the ‘perfect’ service for music and readings, but she wished for something more low key.
Dame Mary said in 2012, aged 82: ‘I’ll be happy with a small, private funeral at a church near my home. I’d like my ashes scattered in my garden’.
She continued: ‘I don’t like to think about dying because I’m having so much fun’, adding that her ‘pet hate’ was that ‘funerals have to be celebrations’.
‘There seems to be a need these days to be jolly, but whatever happened to sadness? I don’t think there’s anything wrong with a bit of wailing’, she said.
Dame Mary was speaking to journalist Rob McGibbon in November 2012 for his Daily Mail column called The Definite Article. The popular Q&A appeared each week in Weekend magazine and always featured the question to a celebrity: ‘The order of service at your funeral…’ and the final question was always ‘The way you want to be remembered’.
When asked about her own legacy, Dame Mary said: ‘As the girl who made clothes and make-up that brought a touch of fun and colour into people’s lives’.
Dame Mary famously declared she ‘didn’t have time to wait for women’s lib’ and so began a fashion revolution to rescue young women of the 1950s and 1960s from being forced to dress like their mothers for another generation.
She raised hemlines to audacious heights, spearheaded sack dresses and turned women’s trousers and tights into wardrobe staples, as well as popularising the bob haircut pioneered by her friend, the hairdresser Vidal Sassoon.
Sleeveless shift dresses, PVC raincoats, Peter Pan collars, skinny-rib sweaters, block-coloured tights and jumpsuits were also among Dame Mary’s revolutionary designs.
Her make-up range would also come to be considered as forward-thinking as her clothing.
In 2014, Dame Mary, who named the miniskirt after her favourite make of car, recalled its ‘feeling of freedom and liberation’.
She said: ‘It was the girls on King’s Road who invented the mini. I was making clothes which would let you run and dance and we would make them the length the customer wanted. I wore them very short and the customers would say, ”shorter, shorter”.’
