- [Hamish] Although we're living in a time
when covering our faces is expected, if not required,
our legs are another story.
Skin is, once again, in.
Could the resurgence of rising hemlines
be a response to pandemic-era restrictions?
I'm Hamish Bowles, "Vogue's" global editor at large.
And from the leggy liberation of the 1960s youthquake
to the barely-there micro skirts
from the spring 2022 runways,
I'm here to tell you everything you need to know
about the miniskirt.
When we think about the miniskirt
in mainstream contemporary culture and fashion,
we might think first of the swinging '60s,
but it actually has a far, far older history.
It appears that many, from noblemen in Ancient Egypt
to the ladies of Duan Qun Miao,
favored the revealing wardrobe piece we know and love today.
In European and American fashion,
the long hemlines of women's skirts
began inching their way up in the early 20th century.
And all those scandalized by a bear ankle
were soon to be rocked by the roaring 1920s
and the enormously popular flapper girl era.
With Josephine Baker's iconic banana skirt
and la mode sportive made popular by Coco Chanel
and legendary tennis players Suzanne Lenglen
and her designer Jean Patou,
women's legs were both on display and on the move.
Some began speculating that the length of women's skirts
was somehow intrinsically linked
to the booming stock market.
And thus the hemline index,
the theory that hemlines rise in times of economic growth
and fall in times of strife, was born.
But what goes up must always come down,
and the stock market crash of 1929
once again sparked a more conservative approach
to women's fashion.
During the Second World War, fabric rationing,
introduced to prioritize uniforms over fashion,
necessarily made skirts skimpier.
After the war, Christian Dior's new look
brought long, full skirts into fashion.
But it wasn't until the 1950s that rock and roll
and youth dance crazes bred the need for shorter outfits
women could groove in more freely.
Couture and Hollywood soon followed suit,
whether it was Balenciaga's above-the-knee sack dress,
Yves Saint Laurent's trapeze line for Dior in 1958,
or the costumes in science fiction
and space age films of the moment, every one got the hint.
The miniskirt earned its official moniker,
took over the global fashion stage
during what "Vogue's" Diana Vreeland called a youthquake.
And like the '20s before it,
the style of the '60s was influenced by and for
a youth culture that was pushing boundaries
and exploring sexual identity in a rapidly changing society.
Mary Quant, often considered to have invented
the miniskirt, although that is up for discussion,
was a design leader in the London boutique movement,
inspired by schoolgirls' dresses
and the short skirts of tap dancers.
Soon, everyone who was anyone
couldn't be spotted without one.
It was then that Courrege achieved international acclaim
for his 1964 collection featuring miniskirts
with an haute couture twist.
While Paco Rabanne and Emanuel Ungaro utilized metals,
industrial plastics and synthetics
to create ultra modern space age accessories and garments.
Not everyone, however, was on board the miniskirt spaceship.
Many schools banned students from skirts above the knee.
That's to say nothing of the fashion elite's disapproval,
famously including Coco Chanel.
She considered knees a woman's ugliest feature.
But that didn't stop 39-year-old Jacqueline Kennedy
from wearing this Valentino dress
to her 1968 wedding to Aristotle Onassis.
The miniskirt, it seemed, could transcend space,
time, and age.
The 1970s saw some respite from the mini mania,
thanks to the hippie era's long flowing skirts
and bell bottoms.
But by of the 1980s, the miniskirt reemerged
as the answer for women everywhere.
Frilly rah-rah skirts, working girl suits,
and the unisex plaid kilts designed by Jean Paul Gaultier
in 1984 offered a new versatility to the item.
And the craze hardly slowed its roll.
Versace's bold printed or monochromatic minis
and power suits and Karl Lagerfeld's twist
on Chanel's classic looks of the 1960s
reinvigorated the mini for the MTV generation.
The early aughts saw the invention of the mini mini,
or the micro skirt, with the help
of these paparazzi-obsessed It girls
making the low rise, highly cropped,
and often denim version a touchstone of the era.
Now, almost 20 years later, that miniskirt is back,
thanks in part to Miu Miu's spring-summer 2022 collection.
What was once a look perpetuated by mainly tall,
thin, and young women of the 1960s is now a trend
for people of all shapes, ages, and gender identities.
And whether the miniskirt's return is due to nostalgia
for decades past or a symbol of future economic growth,
we can all agree that perhaps less really is more.
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