Threads in Time #2: The Mini Skirt
In light of Mary Quant’s death, I’m looking into the history of the mini skirt
Although she is often credited with inventing it, Mary Quant isn’t the sole creator of the mini skirt. The whole process of the mini skirt's development happened gradually. Some people say that the original mini skirts were those present on figurines found in Europe, dating back to 5400 BC, as well as on the frescoes of ancient Egyptians. In the 1920s, Josephine Baker performed in various forms of mini skirts, and in the first science fiction films, short hemlines were used to emphasize futuristic costume design. The mini skirt was first mentioned in the media in 1962 in the daily newspaper The Billings Gazette, which described it as a controversial garment from Mexico.
Inspired by the development of the women's emancipation movement in the early 1960s, many designers began experimenting with women's clothing silhouettes. French designer André Courrèges played with the length of women's skirts and created some of the first mini dresses and skirts for his space-age-inspired collections. Because of this, many consider him to be the inventor of the mini skirt. Victoria&Albert made this claim in the exhibition dedicated to Mary Quant they opened in 2019. However, short dresses with hemlines ending above the knee were already made in the 1950s by Cristobal Balenciaga and Yves Saint Laurent, so Courrèges cannot take all the credit for the original design of the mini. The closest to the truth is, as Quant herself once said, neither Courrèges nor she is responsible for the mini skirt - the girls from King's Road are.
Quant was a 21-year-old when she opened her first boutique on King’s Road in Chelsea, London, called Bazaar. She was fascinated by the women's liberation booming at the time and enjoyed watching girls on the streets dramatically shorten their skirts and wear wide silhouettes, expressing rebellion and resistance to the decent, obedient skirt suits their mothers wore in the 1950s. Inspired by that energy, she shortened the skirts in her shop and introduced a hemline that ended a few centimeters above the knee. She named it after her favorite car, the Mini.
With Bazaar and the colorful sweaters and A-line dresses she sold there, Quant gained great popularity among women in London. Her mini skirts soon became synonymous with women's emancipation in the 1960s. This liberation from the rigid forms of the 1950s was further accelerated by the it-girl of the decade, Twiggy, who openly claimed that there was no clothing for young women before Mary Quant and that the designer allowed her to no longer dress like her mother. As a young student at Cambridge and the first female editor of the student newspaper Varsity, the legendary fashion journalist Suzy Menkes also wore Quant’s skirts and claimed they’d completely changed her life.
Mary Quant's street fashion was a complete contrast to the strict haute couture of Parisian fashion houses of the time. Her skirts were more than just a controversial piece of clothing. They were a symbol of liberation and independence, a uniform for women paying their bills, having stable jobs, and leading independent sexual lives for the first time in history. "She changed all of that, and that's why she is my greatest fashion inspiration," wrote Twiggy in an article about Mary Quant for British Vogue in 2019. And she wasn't the only one deeply influenced by her. Mary Quant is one of the few female names at the top of the fashion world that has changed so much for women. Like suffragettes’ white or Chanel’s riding pants worn outside sports activities, Mary Qunat’s skirts became a critical symbol of resistance. Clothing has been a fundamental tool of resistance for women throughout history, and the mini skirt is one of the most influential symbols of that practice.
Cover image courtesy of Mary Quant Archive Victoria and Albert Museum © George Konig.