Neville Quist inspired from his teenage years by The Rolling Stones in Adelaide for his Saville Row menswear designs
Neville Quist (top right) was honoured for his menswear designs under the Saville Row label, influenced by Quist's obsession with The Rolling Stones.
The Rolling Stones inspired Adelaide’s Neville Quist, a five-times nominee for Australia’s leading menswear fashion designer, to start his hugely-successful Saville Row label.
The nephew of Adrian Quist, Australian Open tennis title winner and Davis Cup captain, the young Neville Quist had his life course changed by a schoolyard conversation at Sacred Heart College in Somerton Park in the early 1960s. Quist was hooked by talk about a band’s rebel lead singer who wore no shoes – “so unlike the Beatles”.
Three years later, the 13-year-old Quist joined 3,000 other young fans at Centennial Hall, Wayville Showgrounds, for the Roy Orbison concert – supported by a little-known rhythm and blues London band called The Rolling Stones. Quist couldn’t hear a thing above the screams but he was amazed by the Stones’ casual look.
Quist quit his first job as a fabric wholesaler, with night-time studies in business administration, to start his own Neville Quist Fashion Shirts in 1971. Two years later, the excitement around the Rolling Stones Exile On Main Street tour and album led Quist to change his company name to Saville Row fashions – after a famous Mayfair, London, street but with an extra L, as in Neville, and with a Rolling Stones link in mind.
A few weeks later the Rolling Stones played a riotous concert at Memorial Drive in Adelaide that saw 18 arrested and five people injured, including a police officer. “I remember Jagger coming out with a cape and a hat on and he bowed to the audience like a ballet dancer,” Quist recalled.
In 1989, Quist’s growing business brought him indirect contact with another music star. He’d developed the first animated patterned men's socks labelled as Johnny Dangerous and was sold throughout 13 European countries. Pacific Dunlop and Bond Underwear had a licensing agreement with Quist. This agreement blocked Michael Jackson use of the brand Dangerous on clothing for his tour and a resolution was negotiated with Quist.
Quist collaborated with Elders agribusiness in 2001 and became its international design consultant and developed Quist superfine knitwear, specialising in Australian merino wool sold nationwide and overseas. It won Quist knitwear accolades such as the "finest knitwear in the world". Quist was nominated five times as Australia's leading menswear fashion designer at the Australian Fashion Awards (1991-96).
With a main shop at King William Road, Hyde Park, Quist, who sponsored his own Formula Ford car during the Adelaide Formula 1 Grand Prix years, travelled the world with his business interests and saw The Rolling Stones in concert on most continents.
Wife Petrine and children Sam and Annabel also shared Quist’s Rolling Stones obsession and his impressive collection of Stones’ memorabilia, including more than 50 albums and every book ever published and specialist items bought on the internet and at auctions. The four Quists were able to walk from the North Adelaide family home in 2014 to see Mick Jagger and the Stones at Adelaide Oval.