There is the question - asked and answered differently by Quant herself and by critics cited throughout the show - of the particular relation between Quant’s work and the feminism which it is seen as related to. Many of these will be pertinent to contemporary audiences: she experiments with gender beyond the binary, and her emphasis on affordable, accessible, and practical womenswear emerges from an engagement with the second-wave feminism of her day, as well as from her own working-class upbringing. ![]() The exhibition works in part chronologically, weaving through Quant’s development as a designer and a businessperson, and part thematically, dealing with her varied social and political concerns, and interventions. Many of the objects on display were loaned or donated by those who owned or inherited them themselves, thanks to a public collection initiative by the V&A. There is a wonderful attentiveness to detail in the structure of the show, and a brilliant array of Quant items to be enjoyed. If Quant, as the exhibition compellingly contends, was at the helm of one of the earliest lifestyle brands, what do we make of the systems of global production and consumption which are our inheritance from her innovations? An ominous note might be heard within this rightly celebratory telling of Quant’s creative and commercial life, in the ears of contemporary listeners. In the 1960s, when her affordable, practical, and defiant designs streamed out of King’s Road, Chelsea, they reached Australian consumers in the department stores which still, then, were set at the core of the Australian retail landscape, and in the centre of the imaginative lives of metropolitan, often working, women. ![]() One hallmark of Quant as a designer is the international reach of her brand she’s marked out, in this show, as one of the earliest global fashion designers and retailers. ![]() The show’s Australian curators have been meticulous in thinking through the relationship of the British designer to Australian domestic audiences, both in the mid-twentieth century and the present.
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