Quotes from Mary Quant

Only ugliness is obscene.

Most of my memories of the Sixties are ones of optimism, high spirits and confidence.

The gods gave man fire and he invented fire engines. They gave him love and he invented marriage.

I used to start re-arranging my school uniform, hitching up my skirt to be more exciting-looking.

One day, a new fabric appeared on the scene. PVC was shiny, waterproof, and unlike anything I'd ever seen before.

I remember one day, when things were going frightfully well, I went to buy myself a really smashing car. I asked them to show me a Porsche with an automatic gearbox, and the salesman called over all the other salesmen, and they stood around absolutely roaring with laughter.

The real creators of miniskirt are the girls, the same that you seen in the streets.

Eating outdoors is a particular passion - that is, eating trestle-table a la nicoise.

I divide my time between all the mud and open space in Surrey and the social life and work in London, particularly Chelsea, which still has the same village feel that it had in the swinging Sixties.

I think to myself, 'You lucky woman - how did you have all this fun?'

Being young is greatly overestimated ... Any failure seems so total. Later on you realize you can have another go.

I didn't think of the mini as sexual but as an instrument of liberation. I wanted to make clothes that you could move in, skirts you could run and dance in, but, of course, wearing clothes like that made you feel and look sexy.

Having money is rather like being a blond. It is more fun but not vital.

A woman is as young as her knees.

The fashionable woman wears clothes. The clothes don't wear her.

Good taste is death. Vulgarity is life.

Risk it, go for it. Life always gives you another chance, another go at it. It's very important to take enormous risks.

I love vulgarity, good taste is death, vulgarity is life

One of the things I've learned is never to horde ideas, because either they are not so relevant or they've gone stale. Whatever it is, pour it out.