Autobiography - review

Autobiography
by Mary Quant
(Headline, £25)

The biggest disappointment on reading Mary Quant's memoirs, aside from the fact she cannot write at all, is that she is a toff, and was married to a toff. You know the sort: all topless cars, impromptu delicious meals in Provence, beauty, ease and eccentricity.

I had thought the woman who transformed the lives of ordinary working girls was one herself, but it turns out she was the daughter of a lecturer and historian father and a maths prodigy mother. Consequently, nothing in Quant's world ever seems difficult, although it must have been.

She hints at the hurdles - her husband Alexander Plunket Greene's infidelity, sexism in the workplace - but they are never more than a polka dot of annoyance. But maybe the Sixties were a breeze: Quant writes about Harrods' super-casual accounts department, which meant they never hassled you for money for at least a year. Oh, that life was like that now.

The book is not only badly written, it's repetitive, too, telling us several times about the 90 per cent tax rate, and the fact you couldn't take more than £25 out of the country. The biggest failing, though, is that I still don't understand how Quant came up with the miniskirt. The reaction is here - City gents would shake their umbrellas at the shop window of Bazaar shouting "Immoral!" and "Disgusting!" - but I was desperate for detail. How did she feel about Courrèges, for example, or punk?

There are some wonderful anecdotes, though, such as the one about a dinner with Rudolf Nureyev. When a fellow guest asked him, "What do you do?", "...after a horrified pause, he managed his famous leap from a sitting position, and flew the restaurant".

But, on the whole, everyone is wonderful and witty and talented, which I suppose if you lived in Chelsea in those days, before the Russians and the Eurotrash moved in, they were.

All said, though, I like the sound of Quant, a tireless worker. As the woman who did more to liberate women than almost any other, she is dismissive of today's super-busy mum, who she feels is much more unhappy and unfulfilled than even women in the Fifties. Mary's solitary child had to adapt to his parents' world, learning to play on the floor at the airport rather than be helicoptered within an inch of his life.

I like too her observations on how women's bodies have had to become ever more perfect: the miniskirt and hot pants were not as unforgiving as today's fashion for being bronzed, hairless and having the muscle definition of an Olympic athlete. Quant seemed to be having too much fun to ever work out, and had her pubic hair cut into the shape of a heart, beating Tom Ford and his double G of Gucci by several decades.

You wonder if there will ever be a decade like the Sixties again, ever be anything really new: I imagine Quant hates retro almost as much as she hated the three-day week.

But for £25 I'd have liked lots more photographs: the still of Mary Quant nail polish immediately transported me to my childhood (I wore Moss on my toes and Blushbaby stripes on my non-existent cheekbones). All women today are in her debt, whether we realise it or not.