Mary Quant, the designer of Britain's Swinging '60s known as the mother of the miniskirt, died at 93.

A statement from her family to the PA news agency said she “died peacefully at home in Surrey, UK this morning... She was one of the most internationally recognised fashion designers of the 20th century and an outstanding innovator of the Swinging Sixties”.

She was at the vanguard of the Swinging Sixties shift in fashion, contributing to sweep away British postwar drabness to create a new, bold and fresh way of interpreting fashion. Her colorful and sexy clothes, symbol of the change, were loved by celebrities like Twiggy and Audrey Hepburn. Quant was for thousands a symbol of what the free woman might be. In this spirit, she was an heir to Coco Chanel. One of the best-known designers of the 60s, Quant brought his London fashion in all over the world. She popularised her style and put it out into the mass market.

Born Barbara Mary Quant to two schoolteachers in south London in 1930, she graduated from Goldsmiths in 1953, the year of Queen Elizabeth’s coronation. Bazaar, the store she opened in London in 1955 with her husband, Alexander Plunket Greene, was an immediate success, turning the district into a fashion mecca for young lovers of shoppers.

In 2019 the V&A museum dedicated an exhibition to her that was the first in 50 years and included 35 pieces sourced from a public call-out. "Mary Quant transformed the fashion system, overturning the dominance of luxury couture from Paris. She dressed the liberated woman, freed from rules and regulations," said Jenny Lister, curator of the V&A. In 2021 a documentary directed by Sadie Frost telling the story of her life and clothes of Quant was presented. She was frequently photographed with Vidal Sassoon's geometric "five point" cut and was almost always wearing a mini, including on the occasion of receiving her Order of the British Empire in 1966 at Buckingham Palace.

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