Audio Tour Final Quant
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TRANSCRIPT – Mary Quant Audio Described Tour led by Juliana Capes and supported by Anne Dignan [V&A Dundee Team] Hello and welcome to V&A Dundee. We are an international design museum, showcasing the brilliance of Scottish creativity and the best of design from around the world. The following audio was recorded live at V&A Dundee as part of our digital access programme. We hope you enjoy it. [Juliana Capes] Okay, so we're outside the Mary Quant exhibition at the V&A in Dundee. I'm quite excited. It's in the temporary exhibition space on the main first floor of the museum. And what an entrance! We can see the really strong branding of the Mary Quant brand, I'm sure you remember it. [Anne Dignan] I remember it first-hand, Juliana. I'm a lot older than you are. [Juliana Capes] Yeah, well we've got the Mary Quant, her big name in typography, hanging over the front door of the exhibition in bright red and then, on either side of the door, the walls have been painted the kind of black and white, monochrome stripe like a zebra crossing and also there's a pink and an orangy beside too in the iconic Mary Quant daisy on the right-hand side wall. So already we've got a flavour of the swinging sixties that we're going to go into. [Anne Dignan] Can't wait. [Juliana Capes] It kind of feels like a shopping street in parts and each of- [Anne Dignan] Carnaby Street by any chance? [Juliana Capes] Yeah. Sort of swinging sixties London, yeah. So there's lots of big display cabinets that look like shopfronts. There's also plinths that look a little bit like catwalks, and as you can imagine, the shop windows and catwalks are populated by mannequins that are wearing Mary Quant's clothes. And these shop fronts and plinths are, if you imagine a really big space about the size of, say, four tennis courts, and then we're going to be walking around that big space in an anti-clockwise direction, and in the centre of the space there's a series of little alcoves I suppose, little display bays, and if I was looking at it from above, can you imagine a pound sign-? [Anne Dignan] Oh, definitely. [Juliana Capes] So on the right-hand side as you're walking around, there's the two little alcoves that we'll be going into, and then as we walk around the top of the pound sign, there isn't an alcove there but there is a kind of floating island there. But at the bottom, on the end of the walk around, as we get to the start again, there's another alcove there. So, can you see that kind of pound sign in your head? [Anne Dignan] It's got that iconography about it. I can visualize it spatially. [Juliana Capes] I suppose it's a bit like an indoor market, although it's a bit more upmarket than that. [Anne Dignan] Oh, definitely. [Juliana Capes] Yeah. So when we go in, if you imagine we're going into the exhibition at six o'clock, and we're going to be walking anti-clockwise. [Anne Dignan] To twelve o'clock. [Juliana Capes] To twelve o'clock first. Round the right-hand side of the- [Anne Dignan] Yes. [Juliana Capes] Yeah. So we'll stop first around about six o'clock. And the exhibition is chronological so we're starting late '50s. [Anne Dignan] Okay. [Juliana Capes] So here we are. We're coming in at six o'clock and we're confronted by a cinema screen almost here. We can see a film of Mary Quant and her clothes from the '60s and we hear her talking about her clothes and see her iconic look. You remember that iconic look with that sharp, five-point bob and that dark eye make-up and the nude lip? Do you remember her Anne? [Anne Dignan] Oh, this is nostalgia in massive form. I just can't get over this. I'm just thrown right back to the '60s when I was younger, and I remember people like Cilla Black and other famous people having the Mary Quant look. And it's just filling me with such pleasure and excitement and anticipation for things to come. [Juliana Capes] Let's walk past. Well, let's walk past. [Audio]: I think the point of fashion is not to get bored with looking at somebody. I think the point of clothes for women should be, one, that you're noticed, two, that you look sexy and, three, that you feel good. [Juliana Capes] Wasn't that a lovely start to the exhibition, hearing Mary Quant's voice? And you look really excited now! [Anne Dignan] Oh, yeah. I am really, really illuminated and electrified and on point. [Anne Dignan] I am just so excited. [Juliana Capes] Doesn't the exhibition zing as you come in the room? You can see this really big white, well-lit space that's been subdivided, as we were saying, and what we can see first of all when we get in is this long catwalk-type plinth in front of us with one, two, three, four, five models all in these really familiar Mary Quant-style shift dresses, mini-dresses, jersey dresses that at once say to us '60s in these bright colours. And also the exhibition design. On the right- hand side, on the back wall, we've got the belisha beacon, we've got the street signs, we've got the monochromatic stripes of zebra crossings, the really bright, young, zingy design in this exhibition. And you can kind of hear the music, can't you, from the exhibits? We can hear the music of the '60s, we can hear the chat of the street and the bustle, really got an exciting feeling about this show. [Anne Dignan] It definitely is, because she was such a style icon and, of course, this gives you the idea that you're in some kind of huge shopping bazaar where you've got the busyness and you've got the styles and you've actually got all the stalls clearly laid out. [Juliana Capes] Isn't this fun as well? We're just walking up to this low catwalk-type plinth that's at 6 o'clock in the exhibition and these five mannequins have, in front of them, open white paper shopping bags that you would have bought the clothes from, Mary Quant's clothes. And each one has a different year on it. So we've got 1962, 1963, 1964, '65, '66. So each of these mannequins at the start of the exhibition is a different year. And if you look at them closely and look at the skirt length, can you see the different between 1962 and 1966? [Anne Dignan] Yeah, I think they were just saving on material in 1966! Is that their hair? I think their hair looks different. [Juliana Capes] Yeah, each of the mannequins have got a fantastic white wig on that has a different kind of '60s bob, like the iconic Mary Quant five-point bob or the bob that curls around your cheek bones, or the bob that curls about your jaw line. And the mannequins themselves have to be mentioned, they all have that long, lean-limbed Jean Shrimpton '60s look. [Anne Dignan] Oh, yeah. Well I think real women don't look like that now! But in those days, it was a stylized ideal that you wanted to achieve. And it also was really good in some ways because it meant you tried to eat healthier so that you could emulate the very models that you were looking at. [Juliana Capes] There's a photo of Mary Quant on the back wall as well. And you can see that that was her style - she's this long, lean-limbed women with the short, black, bobbed hair and she's wearing one of these sort of dresses that are on the mannequins. In fact all the photos on the back wall show the dresses on the mannequins and we can see them in the show, in the fashion shows and in the promotional materials from the time. [Anne Dignan] I had a dress like the one that we're just coming on to up here. What's that? [Juliana Capes] 1966. [Anne Dignan] I had a dress the same as that when I was 16. [Juliana Capes] So this is a sweater dress and it's very, very short! [Anne Dignan] It wasn't quite as short as that for me! [Juliana Capes] It's just skimming the bottom, skimming the derriere, and it's made out of black, cotton jersey and it has a long, cream hem at the bottom and it has cream hem about the short T-shirt sleeves and the boat neck top. And there's a little pocket on the top of the chest, and it has a cream top to the pocket and a white cream star on it. And it's just so- [Anne Dignan] Gorgeous. [Juliana Capes] It's so familiar, isn't it? Like you say, you had one, I think a lot of people could identify to having this dress themselves. [Anne Dignan] She was such a sensation on the high streets. She made such in impact. It was then that the idea of a teenager was born.