ABSTRACT
In architecture, the rococo style has been described by James Lees-Milne as a symphony of hilarity; and this happy phrase is equally felicitous for depicting a style of bosom which is the life and soul of the party. The manner in which Mary Quant interprets the rococo style has to be revealed but advance information suggests she has been as busy as any eighteenth-century craftsman. It is very satisfactory that this first outbreak of neo-rococo should take place in dress designing. A dress designer catches the spirit of the day, the feeling in the air, and interprets it in clothes before other designers have begun to twitch at the nerve ends. And the wearing of clothes is the one art in which everyone must participate, willy nilly, the talented and the untalented. Yet a professional or personal preoccupation with the equipment of the body is deemed more frivolous than a similar preoccupation with the equipment of house, garden, and office.
