The fashion industry is well-known for its flashes of collective unconsciousness; those moments when, without warning, several different designers seem to spontaneously land upon the same idea, all at the same time.
So it was with the creation of the first mini skirts in the 1960s – and debate still rages today as to whether it was Mary Quant in London or the Parisian André Courrèges who first suggested that these short skirts were such a great idea – that we became acquainted with the style.
Regardless of the origin, it’s generally agreed that it was Quant who gave this daring new style its name, christening it after her favourite model of car. ‘The mini car went exactly with the mini skirt; it did everything one wanted, it looked great, it was optimistic, exuberant, young, flirty, it was exactly right,’ she once said.
The skirt in Swinging London
London in the 1960s was the spiritual and geographic home of global youth pop culture and Quant’s King’s Road boutique Bazaar was one of its epicentres. It was here that she debuted her version of the mini skirt to a mix of delight (from the younger set) and outrage (the general reaction of the older, more conservative crowd). Legend has it that Quant was inspired by a tap dancer she saw rehearsing, and even on the street in London, the short skirt was often worn with low-heeled Mary Janes or tap shoes. The addition of tights kept the whole ensemble decent – but sometimes only barely!
The other appeal of the mini skirt was that it was relatively easy to run up a homemade version, and so 60s fashion is filled with DIY variations in all manner of fabrics, from printed cotton to crochet. As a mini dress or skirt, they tended to have a slight A-line shape to them, which made strutting up and down the King’s Road an easier feat.
How the French do it
While 1960s fashion in London encouraged a certain DIY ethos, in Paris, designers such as Paco Rabanne and Pierre Cardin made the mini skirt look much more futuristic, fashioning them out of leather, vinyl, plastic and other high-shine fabrics. Black and white op art and other geometric prints were also popular, with graphic results.
It was Courrèges who first showed mini skirts in a couture collection for Spring 1965, scandalising most of Paris in the process – the primary-coloured, geometric sensibilities were recently recalled in the SS15 collection by Jacquemus. Coco Chanel berated him for creating designs that infantilise women, to which he famously replied: ‘I have made women 20 years younger without the use of a scalpel’. Touché!
Courrèges also created the fashion for wearing a short skirt with matching thigh-high or mid-calf boots, a silhouette that would come to define 1960s fashion.
The mini in Melbourne
Wearing a mini skirt on the fashionable streets of London or Paris is one thing; rocking it in 1960s Melbourne is quite another, as model Jean Shrimpton discovered when she wore one to the Melbourne Cup Carnival in 1965. Shrimpton had been flown in to judge Fashions on the Field for Derby Day but her own look completely overshadowed the contestants, as her white mini dress stopped a full four inches (10 centimetres) above the knee. Shrimpton’s dressmaker, Colin Rolfe, claimed to have run out of fabric; Shrimpton argued she had no idea the fuss it would cause. Needless to say, Melbourne society was shocked and the dress hit headlines around the country – and the world.
Coming up short in the office
With all manners of social situations accounted for, the office became the last uncharted territory for the mini skirt. That was until the 1990s, when hemlines receded and legs were firmly on show. The credit (or blame) for this lies largely with television, thanks to characters like Ally McBeal (Calista Flockhart) and Melrose Place’s Amanda Woodward (Heather Locklear). These feisty women liked their skirts short and sharp, and usually teamed them with a matching blazer. Around the world, working women in all manner of powerful professions followed suit with this mini skirt fashion trend.
The mini today
For SS17, his first collection at Saint Laurent, designer Anthony Vaccarello made 80s-inspired mini skirts a focus, offering them in black or gold for more than half of the runway looks. Valentino suggested a more arts-and-crafts approach for Resort17, showing heavily beaded and embroidered styles with simple white shirts. Meanwhile at Gucci, Alessandro Michele uses the abbreviated A-line shape of a mini skirt as a foil for his decadent fabrics and quirky details. It just goes to show that while they may no longer be shocking, mini skirts are still a useful tool for designers to inject a youthful spirit into a decades-old house.