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Image
ref: AIBDC : 009259. Image credit: Katherine Pell |
Released as one of five different PVC designs within the quant afoot range, they were advertised in Flair magazine in September 1967 as:
‘… boots with a difference in a sparkling first collection … in crystal clear plastic over colours that zoom into fashion's orbit, they're boots that shrug off wear and weather marks, come up shining.’
They were sold at a cost of 49/11 (everything under £5 was priced in
shillings and pence), equivalent today to roughly £50.
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ref: Flair magazine advert, September 1967. |
The boots were the culmination of
two years’ work to create affordable, distinctive, fun and comfortable footwear
in PVC, a material Quant had first explored in her ‘wet collection’ launched in
1963. Encountering problems in mass-producing these designs, such as machining
the seams causing the synthetic material to both split and melt, Quant collaborated
with Alligator Rainwear, who were able to devise a method for welding the seams
instead and successfully manufactured the plastics coats in large volumes. This
partnership led to the development of the PVC boots with renowned boot makers,
G.B. Britton & Sons.
Transcript 0:17 – 1.36:
“Really, it’s how I got into this shoe thing because I’ve never had a pair of comfortable shoes in my life and it’s the same thing, you know, feet are a very complex shape and I wanted to make shoes which were like glass or bottles and had no seams and bits that rub and all that, and all bendy and loose … So, there were some chaps that had just invented this way of making things where you just pour a kind of chewing gum into a mould, into a last, and you get out what you want, and you know, rather like making sort of jelly. And so they said, more or less, come and play with my machinery and this is how we started making these shoes.”
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Image
ref: Quant holding a red Chelseas boot in her design studio, 1967. |
Despite contemporary anecdotal evidence suggesting that the boots were not actually that comfortable (they could make your feet sweat in the hot summer, freeze in the cold winter and wet in the rain as the neck of the boots were so wide), they were the ideal footwear to complement the rising hemlines and tights that Quant helped to make so popular.
The Chelseas are currently on display in the museum but if you would like to view them in closer detail, or look at any of MoDiP’s other Mary Quant plastics objects, contact us for an appointment.
Katherine Pell
Collections Officer
References:
Lister, J., (2019) Mary Quant.
London: V&A Publishing, pp. 148.
https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=u3LeDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA21&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false
https://collections.museumoflondon.org.uk/online/object/769430.html
https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O84584/pair-of-ankle-quant-mary/
https://fashiontextilemuseumblog.wordpress.com/2020/08/13/mary-quant-the-wet-collection/
https://web.archive.org/web/20110629185733/http://www.buckscc.gov.uk/bcc/museum/object/object.page
https://www.modip.ac.uk/artefact/modipl-0035
https://www.thejohnbrightcollection.co.uk/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EztpFM3wjqU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SB5eIfHXkWQ
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