The Miniskirt

Carnaby Street ~ 1965

Until 1960 fashion had been dictated from Paris, and, by and large, women did as Paris told them.  But the postwar baby boomers, just coming to maturity, had more money and were more assertive than any previous generation of teenagers, and manufacturers began to design styles to appeal to them.

Color cor-ordinated underwear

One of the advantages of Lycra over rubber was that it could be dyed, and brightly coloured and often colour coordinated underwear was introduced to appeal to the trendy youngsters.

In the early sixties a group of young London designers, centred around High Street and Carnaby Street, of whom Mary Quant is perhaps the best known, introduced a range of radical new styles.  These were rapidly adopted by the younger generation, and the seat of fashion power moved from Paris to ‘Swinging’ London.  Paris -- and Fashion with a capital F -- were never to regain their old dominance.

In Australia the overthrow of the old regime was marked by the appearance of the English model, Jean Shrimpton at the Melbourne Spring (horse) Racing Carnival in 1965. The Carnival comprises a series of Race Meetings at the start of November, and the highlights include Derby Day and the Melbourne Cup -- perhaps the only horse race in the world to be dignified with a public holiday. The Carnival was the highlight of the Melbourne Social Season, and used to be the excuse for a fashion extravaganza.

Melbourne's weather is fickle of the best of times, and particularly fickle in Spring.  The weather can be beautiful, but you can also get drenching thunderstorms, searing northerlies, or freezing southerlies, all in the space of five minutes.  Despite this, would be fashionable women spent months planning their new outfits, and fortunes on hats, hairdos and costumes.

A few years earlier the Fashion Council of Australia had introduced a ‘Fashions in the Field’ contest, and each year they would invite a leading international fashion model to add a little extra glamour.  In 1965 they invited Jean Shrimpton (the Shrimp), but her minders forgot to tell her that she was attending a religious festival, not just a horse race, and fashionable ladies were horrified when she turned up in a simple shift -- no hat, no perm, no gloves, no stockings, almost certainly no girdle and probably not even a bra.

This dramatic occasion marked the end of an era, and Fashion has never been the same since.

Jean Shrimpton at Derby Day 1965

Foremost among the new styles was the miniskirt, which, to the disgust of the self appointed custodians of public morality, rose to unheard of heights.

Tights had been invented long before, but were either heavy wool garments to wear outdoors in winter, or specialised garments for the stage.  However it was impossible to maintain decorum while wearing girdle and stockings under a miniskirt, and after a short period of great embarrassment for the girls, and wonderful views for the men, modern styles of pantyhose were developed, and were quickly adopted. 

At first they tended to sag, and control briefs or bodysuits were worn to hold them up, but as they improved, and as women realised that they no longer had to wear girdles to hold up their stockings, they soon ditched them.

Seamless stockings had been introduced in the mid-fifties, but until this time fully fashioned stockings had remained the preferred choice of the fashionable woman. However the new tights were seamless, and fully fashioned stockings quickly faded away.

Skirts fairly soon returned to more normal lengths, but a great many women never returned to their girdles. Fashion never recovered from the miniskirt, and the fashion industry became increasingly irrelevant.  The major designers continued to run their annual shows, but in many cases the styles shown were chosen for their shock value, and were often completely impractical and almost impossible to wear.
The designers were ignored by the general populace, and the general standard of dress declined steadily, as both sexes made less and less effort to dress up.

For a few years the corsetry makers advertised desperately to try to preserve their market, but then they began to cut their losses, and advertisements for girdles quickly disappeared from the women's magazines, and even more quickly from television.  Most of the classic styles remained in the shops until about 1990, but the ranges were steadily reduced, and (at least in Australia) the classic styles had all but disappeared by 2000.

However a substantial market for lightweight ‘Shapers’ remained, and probably 30% of the available pantyhose consisted of control brief styles.

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