Obit for a Pickpocket
to Mary Quant, 1930-2023, with fragments from her NYT obituary
These are the aperçus of the modes of production:
—It’s ridiculous, in this age of machines,
to continue to make clothes by hand. —Why can’t people see
what a machine is capable of doing itself,
instead of making it copy what the hand does?
Spoken like a pickpocket of the Gods! Amateurs
at accounting emerging from post-war privation.
Her Siamese cat in the habit of eating patterns
she purloined from Harrod’s. She delighted
in pranks. Turned her back on the corseted shapes. Horror
upon her, she made the window displays a performance.
Upside down atelier. Spray-painted lives, mannequins
dyed or bald or clad in hurried synthetics. Couldn’t stand
one dress hanging in the closet
listless as estates.
These were the bedsit quantum mechanics
of Dame Gamine. Prodigy.
Can we stop for a second and talk about
how beautiful Evelyn Waugh’s electric guitar was?
She and Mr. Waugh became inseparable.
Wore mother’s pajamas to class,
ran their fears and wash & wears
like a coffeehouse bar. She cried on her
13th birthday because she knew horror
was getting closer.
—The young should look like the young.
—The most extreme fashion should be very cheap.
Passers-by sneered: “God, look at this Modern Youth!”
Shall we be Modern Youth tonight?
These are the aperçus in obituaries.
—First, because only the young are daring enough to wear it.
And second, because it will not last.