JERSEY GIRL: MARY QUANT'S KNIT REVOLUTION
We were saddened to hear of the passing of Mary Quant today, Thursday 13 April 2023. In her memory, we look back at the Selvedge archive, issue 86 (p64-66) to celebrate her legacy in fashion.
‘Odd gear at the Palace’ declared The Daily Mail in 1966, describing the outfit Mary Quant wore to her O.B.E. ceremony at Buckingham Palace. Breaking with convention, even by today’s standards, Quant went to receive her award from Queen Elizabeth, wearing a cream-coloured, wool jersey mini-dress. It stopped seven inches above the knee and was accessorised with cut-out gloves and a matching beret.
The iconoclastic spirit of the sixties and Mary Quant’s pivotal role in the stylistic experimentation of the period, are often connected with the mini-skirt. But they are less often connected with the commonplace, and seemingly mundane fabric, jersey. Jersey is a stretchy, weft-knitted fabric, which we have grown so accustomed to wearing, that we rarely notice it. But it was not always so. As The Daily Mail headline shows, the use of jersey in womenswear was, at one point, highly conspicuous.
Image: Models and Mary Quant a the Quant Afoot footwear collection launch, 1967
The jersey dress in question, was an adaptation of a dress from Lord and Taylor’s ‘Intimate Apparel’ range, which Quant had bought in New York. She can be seen wearing it – provocatively eyeing up the camera – on the paperback cover of her 1966 autobiography, Quant by Quant. The fact that Quant marketed her adaptations of this jersey dress as ‘underwear as outerwear’, highlights key elements of jersey’s movement into womenswear and the cultural connotations that it brought with it.
Single wool jersey, or stockinette, made its first move into female outerwear around 90 years earlier, in the 1870s. Before then, it was used only for either male sportswear, and fisherman’s smocks, or for women’s hosiery and undergarments. Its transition into women’s bodices in the late 19th century – of which there is a rare example in the V&A’s collections (T.3981977) – was surrounded by the sexual frisson, and moral anxiety, of women wearing a material associated with menswear and underwear in public.
The material was used increasingly for women’s clothing throughout the first half of the 20th century, most notably by Gabrielle Chanel, Jaeger and Marks and Spencer. A commonly reported problem was, however, its lack of weight and its sag. But this all changed in the 1950s, with the invention of double jersey. Double jersey, (produced by two sets of needles knitting simultaneously), retained all the favourable stretch and crease-resistance of single jersey, while also providing structure and the ability to retain shape. As a result, it became the go-to fabric for the active, fashionable, young woman of the 1960s. As Quant said, she wanted her clothes to be a ‘mix of sporty, chic and sexy’, and jersey garments – with their inheritance from sportswear and underwear – were just that.
It became so popular that the fashion industry underwent what was termed, ‘the double jersey boom’. The fabric’s success was not, however, only dependant on the qualities which it afforded to women. It was also embedded in the economics of its production. In 1971 The Financial Times a five-page spread on the boom, and how the production of knitted fabrics had superseded that of woven fabrics. One analyst stated that ‘a knitting machine will produce up to ten times as much fabric as a loom costing the same amount of money.’ The cheapness of manufacturing jersey meant that companies could respond quickly to rapid changes in fashion, and the growing demands of the mass-market.
On top of these merits, the stretch of the knitted material could compensate for a lack of skilled tailoring. This meant that it was much easier to mass-produce standard sized clothes in jersey – compared to a woven fabric – and for these clothes to stretch to the body of the wearer. In her autobiography, Quant reflected on setting up her wholesale line, ‘The Ginger Group’, in 1963. She noted that ‘it is pointless in fashion to create a couture design and imagine it can be adequately produced cheaply in quantity’. ’Fashion’, she said, ‘must be created from the start for mass-production with full knowledge of mass-production methods.’ No surprise, then, that when she was looking for a cheap and easy way to democratise fashion for the mass-market, she chose jersey.
Quant originally used a double jersey from Corah’s of Leicester, but later turned to bonded jersey – an even more economical way of producing a stretchy but stable fabric. The Mary Quant jersey garments that will be on display in the V&A’s forthcoming exhibition of her work, are single wool jersey, heat-bonded to a knitted acetate backing. Shirley Shurville, Mary Quant’s Assistant, described the moment she first saw this material. Remembering how Quant had returned from America and handed her a scrap of the fabric, asking her to source a British supplier. As luck would have it, that very same day a representative from Ames Mills, came to the reception asking to see her. She was ‘delightfully surprised’ when he took out the only sample of fabric in his briefcase and it ‘turned out to be bonded jersey’.
Mary Quant was by no means the only designer in the 60s and 70s who relied heavily on jersey. But as Jenny Lister, the co-curator of the exhibition has suggested, through canny marketing – of herself as much as her clothes – and by adapting fashionable looks for the mass-market, Quant became the figurehead of the jersey boom.
Focusing in on her use of the fabric elucidates many of the central stylistic, social, technological, and economic factors of the period. The miniskirts and modernist silhouettes of the 60s, and the later cling and swing of the 70s, were all – quite literally – shaped by the meteoric rise of jersey. This rise also constituted the last boom of the British textiles industry, stimulating demand for cheap labour, draining investment away from the weaving industry, and resulting in the eventual search for cheaper textile manufacturing outside of the UK entirely. ‘Odd gear’ it may be, but it is also ‘gear’ which eloquently tells many of the defining stories of the 20th century. Dani Trew and Mary Quant was on show at the Victoria and Albert Museum, 6 April 2019 – 20 February 2020, www.vam.ac.uk
This article is from the Selvedge archive, issue 86 (p64-66).
‘Odd gear at the Palace’ declared The Daily Mail in 1966, describing the outfit Mary Quant wore to her O.B.E. ceremony at Buckingham Palace. Breaking with convention, even by today’s standards, Quant went to receive her award from Queen Elizabeth, wearing a cream-coloured, wool jersey mini-dress. It stopped seven inches above the knee and was accessorised with cut-out gloves and a matching beret.
The iconoclastic spirit of the sixties and Mary Quant’s pivotal role in the stylistic experimentation of the period, are often connected with the mini-skirt. But they are less often connected with the commonplace, and seemingly mundane fabric, jersey. Jersey is a stretchy, weft-knitted fabric, which we have grown so accustomed to wearing, that we rarely notice it. But it was not always so. As The Daily Mail headline shows, the use of jersey in womenswear was, at one point, highly conspicuous.
Image: Models and Mary Quant a the Quant Afoot footwear collection launch, 1967
The jersey dress in question, was an adaptation of a dress from Lord and Taylor’s ‘Intimate Apparel’ range, which Quant had bought in New York. She can be seen wearing it – provocatively eyeing up the camera – on the paperback cover of her 1966 autobiography, Quant by Quant. The fact that Quant marketed her adaptations of this jersey dress as ‘underwear as outerwear’, highlights key elements of jersey’s movement into womenswear and the cultural connotations that it brought with it.
Single wool jersey, or stockinette, made its first move into female outerwear around 90 years earlier, in the 1870s. Before then, it was used only for either male sportswear, and fisherman’s smocks, or for women’s hosiery and undergarments. Its transition into women’s bodices in the late 19th century – of which there is a rare example in the V&A’s collections (T.3981977) – was surrounded by the sexual frisson, and moral anxiety, of women wearing a material associated with menswear and underwear in public.
The material was used increasingly for women’s clothing throughout the first half of the 20th century, most notably by Gabrielle Chanel, Jaeger and Marks and Spencer. A commonly reported problem was, however, its lack of weight and its sag. But this all changed in the 1950s, with the invention of double jersey. Double jersey, (produced by two sets of needles knitting simultaneously), retained all the favourable stretch and crease-resistance of single jersey, while also providing structure and the ability to retain shape. As a result, it became the go-to fabric for the active, fashionable, young woman of the 1960s. As Quant said, she wanted her clothes to be a ‘mix of sporty, chic and sexy’, and jersey garments – with their inheritance from sportswear and underwear – were just that.
It became so popular that the fashion industry underwent what was termed, ‘the double jersey boom’. The fabric’s success was not, however, only dependant on the qualities which it afforded to women. It was also embedded in the economics of its production. In 1971 The Financial Times a five-page spread on the boom, and how the production of knitted fabrics had superseded that of woven fabrics. One analyst stated that ‘a knitting machine will produce up to ten times as much fabric as a loom costing the same amount of money.’ The cheapness of manufacturing jersey meant that companies could respond quickly to rapid changes in fashion, and the growing demands of the mass-market.
On top of these merits, the stretch of the knitted material could compensate for a lack of skilled tailoring. This meant that it was much easier to mass-produce standard sized clothes in jersey – compared to a woven fabric – and for these clothes to stretch to the body of the wearer. In her autobiography, Quant reflected on setting up her wholesale line, ‘The Ginger Group’, in 1963. She noted that ‘it is pointless in fashion to create a couture design and imagine it can be adequately produced cheaply in quantity’. ’Fashion’, she said, ‘must be created from the start for mass-production with full knowledge of mass-production methods.’ No surprise, then, that when she was looking for a cheap and easy way to democratise fashion for the mass-market, she chose jersey.
Quant originally used a double jersey from Corah’s of Leicester, but later turned to bonded jersey – an even more economical way of producing a stretchy but stable fabric. The Mary Quant jersey garments that will be on display in the V&A’s forthcoming exhibition of her work, are single wool jersey, heat-bonded to a knitted acetate backing. Shirley Shurville, Mary Quant’s Assistant, described the moment she first saw this material. Remembering how Quant had returned from America and handed her a scrap of the fabric, asking her to source a British supplier. As luck would have it, that very same day a representative from Ames Mills, came to the reception asking to see her. She was ‘delightfully surprised’ when he took out the only sample of fabric in his briefcase and it ‘turned out to be bonded jersey’.
Mary Quant was by no means the only designer in the 60s and 70s who relied heavily on jersey. But as Jenny Lister, the co-curator of the exhibition has suggested, through canny marketing – of herself as much as her clothes – and by adapting fashionable looks for the mass-market, Quant became the figurehead of the jersey boom.
Focusing in on her use of the fabric elucidates many of the central stylistic, social, technological, and economic factors of the period. The miniskirts and modernist silhouettes of the 60s, and the later cling and swing of the 70s, were all – quite literally – shaped by the meteoric rise of jersey. This rise also constituted the last boom of the British textiles industry, stimulating demand for cheap labour, draining investment away from the weaving industry, and resulting in the eventual search for cheaper textile manufacturing outside of the UK entirely. ‘Odd gear’ it may be, but it is also ‘gear’ which eloquently tells many of the defining stories of the 20th century. Dani Trew and Mary Quant was on show at the Victoria and Albert Museum, 6 April 2019 – 20 February 2020, www.vam.ac.uk
This article is from the Selvedge archive, issue 86 (p64-66).
1 comment
It was my pleasure to interview Ms. Quant when I was in the Fashion Department of The Oakland Tribune. I keep a framed photo of her,skirt in hand, near a rack of clothes with me, notebook in hand. She was a delightful imp and a charmer.