Quant by Quant by Mary Quant

One of our plans at IndieBooks is to build up a list of interesting business books: that is, works that can help you make sense of your workplace or develop your management skills without drowning in jargon or putting up with snake-oil, ‘how to make your fortune’ simplifications. ‘Serve to Lead’, the British Army’s manual on leadership, is one of those, and that’s coming out in September. Another was to have been the quirky autobiography of the fashion designer and 1960s icon Mary Quant. It’s a wonderful book, in some ways entirely of its time, but still providing fascinating insights into how she built a fashion empire from nothing. The King’s Road, minis and miniskirts, Mods and Swinging London – it’s all there. But so too is how she got her business off the ground, overcame technical and marketing challenges, and took the US by storm.

Sadly for us, we couldn’t secure the rights to bring this inspiring text back into print. The reason? Well, there’s good news in that: because it turns out that Mary is currently working on a new autobiography, to be published by Headline at a date yet to be announced. We hope it has the same freshness and elan of the original. Meanwhile, ‘Quant on Quant’ can still be found in second hand bookshops and is well worth a read.