THE FIRST BRITISH DESIGNERS

                                                                                                      

Hello readers, to begin with our first post we bring you what started it all. We know how fashion has changed a lot during the years and nowadays it changes so fast that there is also a term called ¨fast fashion ̈ for some items in current clothing. Inside this blog we are going to explore who and how it makes these changes and all the process over the years, starting with the most importants, the first British designers. 

                                                            The first male designer    

 

 Charles Frederick Worth was a designer born in the city of Bourne, Lincolnshire on 13th October 1825, his parents were William and Ann Worth. William abandoned his family in 1836 and left them in a precarious economic situation. At eleven years, Frederick began working in a printing press, one year later he moved to London to work as an apprentice in a clothing store. Seven years later, he joined Swan and Edgar, a prominent clothing store.

In 1846, he moved to Paris. Ann died in 1852, when he was an assistant at a prestigious parisian firm, Gagelin. Charles began to make dresses to complement the shawls with that Gagelin gave him permission to open a dress department and he officially started his career in fashion. His apparels were exhibited at the Great London Exhibition of 1851 and then in Paris. Worth was totally focused on the making of clothes and not on sale and with Otto Gustav Bobergh  they opened a fashion house at 7 Rue de la Paix in 1858. In 1860, the ball gown of the princess of Metternich caught the attention of Empress Eugenie and after that he became her personal designer. From that moment, his garments acquired international fame and a high demand.

Worth changed the system completely with innovations, like presenting the dresses to the clients worn by beautiful and elegant young women (his own wife is considered the first model and mannequin in history); the presentation of two seasons a year, spring-summer and autumn-winter, to maximize the benefits, label all his garments with his name .These novelties were immediately copied by the other fashion creators and converted into standard. 

The garments were sewn by hand, although since the introduction of the sewing machine in the 1860s it will be used for some general seams and finals.

 

The fame that Worth earned was by his ability to choose and manipulate textiles so that they adapted to the complexion and personality of his clients. He designed sets of interchangeable bodices and skirts, instead of full dresses, which gave greater versatility. 

Worth highlighted for his progressive attitude towards fashion. In the mid-1860s, he experimented with flat-faced crinolines and gored skirts.

In the 70s, he explored the mermaid silhouette that required the famous "princess line", with no cut at the waist. And in the 90s, he took advantage of the resurgence of gigot sleeves, whose name comes from the shape they had, similar to that of a lamb leg. After all that, many claim that Charles Frederick Worth was the first fashion designer and the first dressmaker/seamstress to be considered a true artist and the father of the modern fashion business and haute couture in te UK.

                                                         The first female designer

Dame Barbara Mary Quant better known as Mary Quant was an English fashion designer who was born on 11 February 1930 in London.  She grew up in London’s Blackheath neighborhood. Therefore, her parents, Jack and Mildren Quant were teachers, from an early age Mary knew she wanted to work in fashion. 

She went to Blackheath High School before studying illustration at Goldsmiths College, where spent two years designing hats for the Danish milliner Erik.After that, Quant received a diploma in art education from Goldsmiths and went on to become an apprentice couture milliner, at which point she began designing and manufacturing clothes.In 1957, she opened a boutique with her husband and a friend, called Bazaar, on the King’s Road in London.It was an immediate success and within seven years the company had expanded throughout Europe and the Unite States. in the early 1970s, Quant stopped making clothes but continued to design clothing, furs, lingerie, household linens, and eyeglass frames. She also continued to direct the cosmetic business that she had started in 1955 until its sale in 2000.In 1966, when Quant received her award of the British Empire for her contribution to the fashion industry, she could not disappoint her audience, so she arrived at Buckingham Palace to accept the honor in her characteristic short jersey dress and cut-away gloves. That same year, she wrote her first book Quant by Quant (in this autobiographical book, she captures the world in which she found inspiration. Moreover,  in this project the designer expressed her desire to eliminate snobbery and “make fashionable clothes available to everyone).From 1973 to 1974 she held a retrospective exhibition of 1960s fashion at the London Museum entitled Mary Quant's London.  As a curiosity, decades later, the Victoria and Albert Museum created its own 120-piece exhibition focusing on the first 20 years of her career. In 2012, she wrote her last book Mary Quant: Autobiography (in which she told more about her private and professional life).

 

Mary Quant is immortalized as the British fashion designer who popularized miniskirts and created the “Chelsea look.” 

She designed many clothes and accessories but her best-selling items were white T-shirts with high collars used to brighten up black dresses or T-shirts and black stretch leggings. Knee-high white patent plastic lace-up boots and tight skinny rib sweaters in stripes and bold checks, which it calls the “London look”.

Quant has sometimes claimed that she invented the miniskirt but other times has cited the girls who visited her shops as the true inventors, as they wanted their skirts shorter and shorter. A fun fact is that she even named the skirt after her favorite make of car: the Mini.

   Bibliography

Charles Frederick Worth (2023). En Wikipedia, la enciclopedia libre. Disponible en:  https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Frederick_Worth  [05.10.2023]

Charles Frederick Worth. Culturas de Moda. [en línea] 11.04.2017. Disponible en:https://culturasdemoda.com/glossary/charles-frederick-worth/ [05.10.2023]

Mary Quant (2023). En Brtannica , T. Editors of encyclopaedia. Disponible en: https://www.britannica.com/biography/Mary-Quant  [05.10.2023] 

 

Biography.com Editors, Adrienne Donica (2023) ¨Mary Quant¨ en Biography [En línea]. Disponible en: https://www.biography.com/fashion-designer/mary-quant [Consulta: 05.10.2023] 

Donna Klein (2016), citing online and visual sources of information [Recollection], disponible en: https://recollections.biz/blog/3084-2/ [Consulta: 05.10.2023] 

Clara Ferrero (2018), “Por fin la minifalda de Mary Quant tiene la exposición que merece” en El País [En línea]. Disponible en: https://smoda.elpais.com/moda/actualidad/minifalda-mary-quant-exposicion-museo-victoria-albert/