AFP |
Paris
February 7, 2014 Last Updated
at 17:21 IST
It was all too much for Coco
Chanel.
As the sixties started to
swing, the French fashion icon pronounced mini-skirts to be "just
awful".
She also famously declared that
she had never met a man who liked women wearing them.
How wrong can you be?
Half a century later and with
Mary Quant, the woman credited with inventing it turning 80 this month, the
mini remains a wardrobe staple worldwide.
A hemline half-way up the thigh
is no longer synonymous with rebellion and newly-won sexual freedom as it was
in the mini's first decade.
But the style remains as
popular as ever with the likes of Kate Moss and Sienna Miller having lately
given it a contemporary twist as an element of the "boho chic" look
copied by millions.
Karl Lagerfeld, Chanel's
current artistic director, recently described Coco's dismissal of the mini as
one of the biggest mistakes she ever made.
The German designer has
underlined that belief by making above-the-knee skirts a staple of the Chanel
suit.
"Coco must be turning in
her grave," observed Laurent Cotta, a fashion historian.
Cotta echoes Quant's own
admission that the mini was a trend on the streets before she gave it its name,
taking inspiration from another 60s design classic, the Mini car.
"It was a revolution but
it didn't come out of nowhere. The trend was already established," Cotta
said.
"It was in the air- a
mini-skirt was a way of rebelling. It stood for sensuality and sex. Wearing one
was a sure-fire way of upsetting your parents."
Not for the first time, a trend
born in the youth culture of Britain soon found its way onto the catwalks of
Paris.
Designer Andre Courreges is
credited with importing the mini to France and some say he rather than Quant
should be considered the inventor of the cut.
Whatever the truth, Courreges's
lead was quickly followed by rival fashion house leaders Yves Saint Laurent and
Pierre Cardin. The latter pushed the trend to its natural limit with even
shorter micro-skirts.
By the mid-sixties, the mini
could be spotted around the world, its success driven by the parallel export
success of British pop, spearheaded by The Beatles and The Rolling Stones.
A ban in, of all places, The
Netherlands lasted only a few months and by 1968 the mini was part of the
uniform of young female students and workers taking to the barricades in that
year of upheaval.
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