Miniskirt#1970s

File:Duan Qun Miao women from a One Hundred Miao Pictures album, pre-1912.gif China. University of Calgary collection.]]In the Warring States period of China, men could wear short skirts similar to a kilt.{{Cite book |last=Xu |first=Zhuoyun |url=https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/730906510 |title=China : a new cultural history |date=2012 |publisher=Columbia University Press |others=Timothy Danforth Baker, Michael S. Duke |isbn=978-0-231-15920-3 |location=New York |oclc=730906510}}{{Rp|page=166}} In the Qin dynasty, the first imperial dynasty of China, some short skirts worn by men were short enough to reach the mid-thighs as observed in the Terracotta army of Qin Shihuang.{{Cite web |last=Fennell |first=Carolyn |date=2018-01-11 |title=On "Skirts" and "Trousers" in the Qin Dynasty Manuscript Making Clothes in the Collection of Peking University* |url=https://www.eastviewpress.com/on-skirts-and-trousers-in-the-qin-dynasty-manuscript-making-clothes-in-the-collection-of-peking-university/ |access-date=2022-07-31 |website=East View Press |language=en-US}} Han Chinese women also wore short outer skirts, such as the {{Transliteration|zh|yaoqun}} ({{Lang-zh|c=腰裙}}) and the {{Transliteration|zh|weichang}} ({{Lang-zh|c=围裳}}); however, they had to be worn over a long skirt.{{Cite book |last=Finnane |first=Antonia |url=https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/84903948 |title=Changing clothes in China : fashion, history, nation |date=2008 |publisher=Columbia University Press |isbn=978-0-231-14350-9 |location=New York |oclc=84903948}}{{Rp|page=49}} One of the earliest known cultures where women regularly wore clothing resembling miniskirts was a subgroup of the Miao people of China, the {{Transliteration|zh|duanqun Miao}} ({{zh|c=短裙苗|p= duǎnqún miáo|l=short skirt Miao}}).{{cite book |last1=Diamond |first1=Norma |title=Cultural encounters on China's ethnic frontiers |date=1997 |publisher=University of Washington Press |isbn=0-295-97528-8 |editor1-last=Harrell |editor1-first=Stevan |edition=2nd pr. |location=Seattle |pages=98–103 |chapter=Defining the Miao |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=WChrSv86uIsC&pg=PA98}} In albums produced during the Qing dynasty (1644–1912) from the early eighteenth century onward to illustrate the various types of Miao, the {{Transliteration|zh|duanqun Miao}} women were depicted wearing "mini skirts that barely cover the buttocks." At least one of the "One Hundred Miao Pictures" albums contains a poem that specifically describes how the women's short skirts and navel-baring styles were an identifier for this particular group.{{cite web |last1=Steele |first1=Apollonia |title=Chinese Language Book |url=https://www.ucalgary.ca/lib-old/SpecColl/Chinese/index.html |access-date=21 October 2015 |publisher=University of Calgary library}}{{cite web |translator-last=Zhang |translator-first=Jane |date=2002 |title=Duan Qun Miao (Mini-Skirt Miao) |url=https://www.ucalgary.ca/lib-old/SpecColl/Chinese/page32.html |access-date=21 October 2015 |publisher=University of Calgary Library |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160304110232/https://www.ucalgary.ca/lib-old/SpecColl/Chinese/page32.html |archive-date=4 March 2016}}

Figurines produced by the Vinča culture ({{Circa|5700}}–4500 BC) have been interpreted by archaeologists as representing women in miniskirt-like garments.{{cite news |last1=Cvekic |first1=Ljilja |title=Prehistoric women had passion for fashion |url=https://www.reuters.com/article/us-archaeology-balkans-idUSL0782181520071112 |access-date=19 September 2016 |work=Reuters |date=12 November 2007}} One of the oldest surviving garments resembling a miniskirt is short and woolen with bronze ornaments. It was worn by the Egtved Girl for her burial in the Nordic Bronze Age ({{Circa|1390}}–1370 BCE).{{cite book|author=A. F. Harding|title=European Societies in the Bronze Age |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=EbIVASSe9jcC&pg=PA372|date=18 May 2000|publisher=Cambridge University Press |isbn=978-0-521-36729-5 |pages=372–}}{{cite web|last1=Ghose|first1=Tia|title=Remains of Bronze-Age Cultic Priestess Hold Surprise |url=http://www.livescience.com/50911-bronze-age-danish-burial.html|website=livescience|date= May 21, 2015|access-date=19 June 2015}}

File:OYME girls.jpg wearing costumes similar to ones described by Melnikov-Pechersky]]

Russian writer Pavel Melnikov-Pechersky has noted numerous times in his ethnographic works about the 19th century Mordvin (Erzya and Moksha) people that their culture valued the beauty of female legs, and Mordvin women could wear short {{ill|ponyova|lt=ponyovas|ru|Понёва}} (a kind of traditional skirt).{{cite book|author=П. И. Мельников-Печерский|title=Очерки Мордвы |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=s8BqCwAAQBAJ&pg=PA97|date=2010|publisher=Директ-Медиа |isbn=978-5-9989-4394-2 |pages=97– |language=ru}}

In 1922, skirts were shortened and could now reach the mid-shin rather than just the ankle.{{cite web | url=https://osgamers.com/faq/why-did-womens-skirts-get-shorter | title=Why did women's skirts get shorter? | date=20 February 2025 }} The banana skirt worn by the dancer Josephine Baker for her mid-1920s performances in the Folies Bergère was subsequently likened to a miniskirt.{{cite book|last1=Kline|first1=Christina Baker|editor1-last=Burt|editor1-first=Anne|title=About face : women write about what they see when they look in the mirror |date=2008 |publisher=Seal Press |location=Berkeley, CA |isbn=9781580052467 |page=60}}{{cite journal |last1=Adams |first1=Michael Henry|title=How Black Style became Beautiful |journal=Ebony |date=September 2007 |page=74 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=rdMDAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA74}} Prior to being censored in 1934, cartoon character Betty Boop also wore a short skirt.{{cite web | url=https://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2006681078/ | title=Betty Boop | website=Library of Congress | year=1932 }} In the 20th century until the 1960 woman did generally not wear skirts above the knee. Exceptions included stage performers or showgirls like Josephine Baker, athletes, and competitive dancers. During the 1950s, even the skirts of cheerleaders and many ballerinas fell to the calf. Women were taught to keep their knees covered, seat themselves in ways that kept the legs together, or maintain other postures to avoid being viewed as sexually promiscuous.{{cite journal |last1=Manchester |first1=William |title=Style is the Changing Woman |journal=The New York Times |date=1975-03-02 |page=240 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1975/03/02/archives/style-is-the-changing-woman.html |access-date=2021-12-01 |quote=Any woman whose hem did not cover the knee was assumed, probably correctly, to be a prostitute.}} Nevertheless, miniskirts were beginning to emerge by this time. Two notable examples that showed miniskirts were the science fiction films Flight to Mars (1951) and Forbidden Planet (1956).{{cite web | url=https://stylecaster.com/history-of-the-miniskirt/ | title=History of the Miniskirt: How Fashion's Most Daring Hemline Came to be | date=7 March 2022 }}

File:Planet Comics 55.jpg

File:Space Patrol cast 1950.JPG cast]]

Extremely short skirts became a staple of 20th-century science fiction, particularly in 1940s pulp artwork such as that by Earle K. Bergey, who depicted futuristic women in a "stereotyped combination" of metallic miniskirt, bra and boots.{{cite book|last1=Bassior |first1=Jean-Noel |title=Space patrol : missions of daring in the name of early television |date=2005 |publisher=McFarland |location=Jefferson, N.C. [u.a.] |isbn=9780786419111 |page=99 |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Z74RN6CBnh0C&pg=PA99 |chapter=Stardrive: Going Network}}{{cite book |last1=Stableford |first1=Brian |title=Historical dictionary of science fiction literature |date=2004 |publisher=Scarecrow Press|location=Lanham, Md. |isbn=9780810849389 |page=77 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=nzmIPZg5xicC&pg=PA77}} The "sci-fi miniskirt" was seen in genre films and television programmes as well as on comic book covers. The very short skirts worn by regular female characters Carol and Tonga (played by Virginia Hewitt and Nina Bara) in the 1950–55 television series Space Patrol are considered as probably the first 'micro-minis' to have been seen on American television. Only one formal complaint relating to the skirts has been known, by an advertisement agency regarding an upwards shot of Carol climbing a ladder. Hewitt pointed out that even though the complainant claimed they could see up her skirt, her matching tights rendered her effectively clothed from neck to ankle. Otherwise, Space Patrol was applauded for being wholesome and family-friendly, even though the women's short skirts would have been unacceptable in other contexts. Although the 30th-century women in Space Patrol were empowered, experts in their field, and largely treated as equals, "it was the skirts that fuelled indelible memories."{{cite book|last1=Bassior |first1=Jean-Noel |title=Space patrol : missions of daring in the name of early television |date=2005 |publisher=McFarland |location=Jefferson, N.C. [u.a.] |isbn=9780786419111 |pages=304–6|chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Z74RN6CBnh0C&pg=PA304 |chapter=Carol and Tonga: The Women of the Space Patrol}} The Space Patrol skirts were not the shortest to be broadcast at the time. The German-made American 1954 series Flash Gordon showed Dale Arden (played by Irene Champlin) in an even shorter skirt.{{cite book|last1=Bassior |first1=Jean-Noel |title=Space patrol : missions of daring in the name of early television |date=2005 |publisher=McFarland |location=Jefferson, N.C. [u.a.] |isbn=9780786419111 |page=25|chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Z74RN6CBnh0C&pg=PA25 |chapter=Blast-Off}}

The manager of an unnamed shop in London's Oxford Street began experimenting in 1960 with skirt hemlines an inch above the knees on window mannequins and noted how positively his customers responded.Montreal Gazette, May 28, 1960, page 2 In August 1961, Life published a photograph of two Seattle students at the University of Hawaiʻi wearing above-the-knee garments called "kookie-muus", an abbreviated version of the traditionally concealing muumuu, and noted a "current teen-age fad for short skirts" that was pushing hemlines well above the knee.{{cite magazine |last1=Staff writer |title=A Business in Billions in Young Styles |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=W1QEAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA81 |magazine=LIFE |publisher=Time Inc |date=11 August 1961 |pages=81–83 |language=en}} The article also showed young fashionable girls in San Francisco wearing hemlines "just above the kneecap" and students at Vanderbilt University wearing "knee ticklers" ending three inches above their knee when playing golf. The caption commented that such short skirts were selling well in the South and that "some Atlanta girls" were cutting old skirts to "thigh high" lengths.

Extremely short skirts, some as much as eight inches above the knee, were observed in Britain in the summer of 1962.{{cite news|last1=Gilmore|first1=Eddie|title=British Girls (Ya! Ya!) Wear Skirts 8 Inches Above Knee|url=https://www.newspapers.com/clip/3454305/independent/|access-date=16 November 2015|work=Independent (Long Beach, California) |via=Newspapers.com|date=12 June 1962|page=22}} The young women who wore these short skirts were called "Ya-Ya girls", a term derived from "yeah, yeah" which was a popular catcall at the time. One retailer noted that the fashion for layered net crinoline petticoats raised the hems of short skirts even higher. The earliest known reference to the miniskirt is in a humorous 1962 article datelined Mexico City and describing the "mini-skirt" or "Ya-Ya" as a controversial item of clothing that was the latest thing on the production line there. The article characterised the miniskirt as stopping eight inches above the knee. It referred to a writing by a psychiatrist, whose name it did not provide, who had argued that the miniskirt was a youthful protest of international threats to peace. Much of the article described the reactions of men, who were said to favour the fashion on young women to whom they were unrelated, but to oppose it on their own wives and fiancées.John Abney, "Yahoo! The Ya-Ya!" Billings Gazette, Aug. 6, 1962, p. 6.

Only a very few people, including an avant-garde in the UK, wore such lengths in the beginning years of the decade.{{cite book |last1=Mulvagh |first1=Jane |title=Vogue History of 20th Century Fashion |date=1988 |publisher=Viking, the Penguin Group |location=London, England |isbn=0-670-80172-0 |page=238 |chapter=1957-1967 |quote=...[T]he mini skirt...was born on the streets among art students and Mods.}}{{cite book |last1=Mulvagh |first1=Jane |title=Vogue History of 20th Century Fashion |date=1988 |publisher=Viking, the Penguin Group |location=London, England |isbn=0-670-80172-0 |page=240 |chapter=1957-1967 |quote=...[T]he mini...had been creeping up art students' legs since 1959.}} The standard hemline for public and designer garments in the early sixties was mid-knee, just covering the knee.{{cite journal |last1=Manchester |first1=William |title=Style is the Changing Woman |journal=The New York Times |date=1975-03-02 |page=240 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1975/03/02/archives/style-is-the-changing-woman.html |access-date=2021-12-01 |quote=Styles were set by the young Mrs. Kennedy—the pillboxes, the shoes with very pointed toes and very slender heels, the hair length just below the ears and softly curled or bouffant. Skirts were a little below the knee...}} It would gradually climb upward over the next few years, fully baring the knees of mainstream models in 1964, when both André Courrèges{{cite book |last1=Howell |first1=Georgina |title=In Vogue: Sixty Years of Celebrities and Fashion from British Vogue |date=1978 |publisher=Penguin Books Ltd. |location=Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England |isbn=0-14-00-4955-X |page=284 |chapter=1964 |quote=Courrèges...skirts are the shortest in Paris – above the knee...From now on sixties fashion will revolve round bare knees...}} and Mary Quant{{cite journal |last1=Manchester |first1=William |title=Style is the Changing Woman |journal=The New York Times |date=1975-03-02 |page=240 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1975/03/02/archives/style-is-the-changing-woman.html |access-date=2021-12-01 |quote=In 1964,...Mary Quant created the miniskirt in London.}}{{cite book |last1=Mulvagh |first1=Jane |title=Vogue History of 20th Century Fashion |date=1988 |publisher=Viking, the Penguin Group |location=London, England |isbn=0-670-80172-0 |page=241 |chapter=1957-1967 |quote=The mini and the Beatles made their impact on America simultaneously in 1964 and were inextricably linked....[I]t seemed that...American youth had embraced London as the world's fashion capital and Quant as its best-known designer.}} showed above-the-knee lengths, followed shortly thereafter by Rudi Gernreich{{cite magazine |title=Fashion: Up, Up & Away |magazine=Time |date=1967-12-01 |volume=90 |issue=22 |page=81 |url=https://time.com/vault/issue/1967-12-01/page/77/ |access-date=2024-02-12 |quote=Gernreich...made his mark by being...the first U.S. designer to raise skirts well above the knee...}} and Jacques Tiffeau in the US.{{cite journal |last1=Bender |first1=Marylin |title=Questions Being Raised with Hems |journal=The New York Times |date=1964-06-12 |page=39 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1964/06/12/archives/questions-being-raised-with-hems.html?searchResultPosition=7 |access-date=2024-03-30 |quote=Rudi Gernreich and Jacques Tiffeau...have chopped daytime hems off at three inches above the knee. Mr. Gernreich admitted that he had been inspired to do so by Courrèges...}} The following year, skirts continued to rise as British miniskirts were officially introduced to the US in a New York show whose models' thigh-high skirts stopped traffic.{{cite book |last1=Howell |first1=Georgina |title=In Vogue: Sixty Years of Celebrities and Fashion from British Vogue |date=1978 |publisher=Penguin Books Ltd. |location=Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England |isbn=0-14-00-4955-X |pages=256–257 |chapter=1960-1969 |quote=...[T]he mini skirt...officially arrived in New York in 1965 with a British fashion show...The models in their thigh-high dresses stopped traffic on Broadway and in Times Square, and were seen on television all across the U.S.A.}} By 1966, many designs had the hem at the upper thigh.{{cite book |last1=Howell |first1=Georgina |title=In Vogue: Sixty Years of Celebrities and Fashion from British Vogue |date=1978 |publisher=Penguin Books Ltd. |location=Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England |isbn=0-14-00-4955-X |page=292 |chapter=1966 |quote=1966:...a year in which...you wear skirts that show the whole length of your legs...}} Towards the end of the 1960s, an even shorter version of the miniskirt, called the microskirt or micro-mini, emerged.{{cite book |last1=Cumming |first1=Valerie |last2=Cunnington |first2=C. W. |last3=Cunnington |first3=P. E. |title=The dictionary of fashion history |date=2010 |publisher=Berg |location=Oxford |isbn=9780857851437 |pages=130–131 |edition=Revised, updated and supplemented}}{{cite book |last1=Whiteley |first1=Nigel |title=Pop design : modernism to mod |date=1987 |publisher=Design Council |location=London |isbn=9780850721591 |page=[https://archive.org/details/popdesignmoderni00whit/page/209 209] |url=https://archive.org/details/popdesignmoderni00whit/page/209 }}

File:Aankomst Paper Dolls , Engelse beatgroep, op Schiphol. De Paper Dolls, Bestanddeelnr 921-4476.jpg at Schiphol Airport in 1968]]

The shape of miniskirts in the 1960s was distinctive. They were not the squeezingly tight skirts designed to show off every curve that 1950s sheath skirts had been, nor were they shortened versions of the tightly belted, petticoat-bolstered 1950s circle skirt. In the 1990s and later, exhibitions on the sixties would occasionally present vintage miniskirts pulled in tight against gallery mannequins, but sixties miniskirts were not worn tight in that way.{{cite journal |last=Molli |first=Jeanne |title=Paris Notes: The Trends for Spring |journal=The New York Times |date=1964-01-16 |page=32 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1964/01/16/archives/paris-notes-the-trends-for-spring.html |quote=Snug dresses are...uncomfortable, [Courrèges] points out...}} Sixties miniskirts were simply-constructed, uninhibiting, slightly flared A-line shapes, with some straight and tapered forms seen in the early years of their existence.{{cite news |last1=Hyde |first1=Nina |author-link=Nina Hyde |title=Miniskirts: The Height of Fashion |newspaper=The Washington Post |date=1982-05-10 |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/1982/05/10/miniskirts-the-height-of-fashion/6adbec55-b555-449d-9f16-86027a5ccd2e/ |access-date=2022-05-10 |quote=In its original incarnation, the mini was different in cut, often narrow and structured with stiff seams a la André Courrèges.}} This shape was seen as deriving from two forms of the 1950s: (1) the shift dress, a waistless, tapered column introduced by Givenchy in 1955,{{cite book |last1=Blackwell |first1=Betsy Talbot |title=The American Peoples Encyclopedia Yearbook 1956: Events and Personalities of 1955 |publisher=Spencer Press, Inc. |location=Chicago, Illinois, USA |page=322 |chapter=Fashion |quote=The shift, a looser, free-falling version of the sheath, was introduced by Givenchy in the fall and winter [1955] Paris collections.}}{{cite book |last1=Mohr |first1=Berta |title=The New Funk & Wagnalls Encyclopedia Yearbook 1955 |publisher=Wilfred Funk, Incorporated |pages=133–134 |chapter=Fashions |quote=France's young Hubert de Givenchy...[showed]...his 'nothing silhouette,' a shift dress hanging straight from shoulder to hem, touching the body...only at...the hips....[A] goodly segment of the population could be observed wearing adaptations of...the gunnysack dress.}} presaged by Karl Lagerfeld in 1954,{{cite book |last1=Mulvagh |first1=Jane |title=Vogue History of 20th Century Fashion |date=1988 |publisher=Viking, the Penguin Group |location=London, England |isbn=0-670-80172-0 |page=189 |chapter=1946-1956 |quote=In 1954 the young Karl Lagerfeld's entry in a competition organized by the Wool Secretariat was the epitome of the youthful chemise. The style that was to be abbreviated in the sixties had arrived.}} and refined by Givenchy and Balenciaga in 1957 under the names sack dress or chemise dress,{{cite journal |last1=Morris |first1=Bernadine |title=It Was Givenchy's Hour Again |journal=The New York Times |date=1979-09-14 |page=6 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1979/09/14/archives/it-was-givenchys-hour-again-appropriate-for-meetings-the-idea-of.html |access-date=2022-03-18 |quote=Along with Balenciaga, [Givenchy] introduced the chemise in the summer of 1957.}}{{cite journal |last1=Morris |first1=Bernadine |title=Saint Laurent, Valentino, Ungaro: 3 Avenues to High Fashion |journal=The New York Times |date=1970-09-18 |page=60 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1970/09/18/archives/saint-laurent-valentino-ungaro-3-avenues-to-high-fashion.html |access-date=2022-04-04 |quote=...[T]he chemise first burst upon the scene in 1957, nurtured by Givenchy and Balenciaga...[I]t made...waves...because dresses lost their belts....[I]t took a couple of years before the chemise became every woman's uniform. Hemlines had to rise...They were mid‐calf at the beginning. Rise they did, through most of the nineteen‐sixties....[A]bout half way through, it changed its name. It was called the shift.}}{{cite news|last1=Morris |first1=Bernadine |title=Seek Not the Past, Lest It Arrive|newspaper=The New York Times |date=1978-07-12 |page=C12 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1978/07/12/archives/seek-not-the-past-lest-it-arrive.html |access-date=2022-04-04 |quote=...[T]he waistless chemise sounded the knell of the old order and brought fashion into the modern era.}}{{cite web |title=Dress, fall/winter 1965-66, Yves Saint Laurent |url=https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/83442 |website=The Met Collection |quote=...[T]he sack dress evolved in the 1960s into a modified form, the shift...}} and (2) the trapeze dresses popularized by Yves Saint Laurent in 1958{{cite book |last1=Mulvagh |first1=Jane |title=Vogue History of 20th Century Fashion |date=1988 |publisher=Viking, the Penguin Group |location=London, England |isbn=0-670-80172-0 |page=254 |chapter=1958 |quote=The dress sloped down from the shoulders to a widened hem just below the knee, maintaining a definite geometric line through precise tailoring.}} that were a variation of Dior's 1955 A-line,{{cite book |last1=Howell |first1=Georgina |title=In Vogue: Sixty Years of Celebrities and Fashion from British Vogue |date=1978 |publisher=Penguin Books Ltd. |location=Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England |isbn=0-14-00-4955-X |page=204 |chapter=1948-1959 |quote=...[W]ith his first collection,...[Saint Laurent] launched the [T]rapeze line – not too different from Dior's A line, but just different enough.}}{{cite book |last1=Howell |first1=Georgina |title=In Vogue: Sixty Years of Celebrities and Fashion from British Vogue |date=1978 |publisher=Penguin Books Ltd. |location=Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England |isbn=0-14-00-4955-X |page=239 |chapter=1955 |quote=Dior produces his new A line, a triangle widened from a small head and shoulders to a full pleated or stiffened hem.}}{{cite book |last1=Mulvagh |first1=Jane |title=Vogue History of 20th Century Fashion |date=1988 |publisher=Viking, the Penguin Group |location=London, England |isbn=0-670-80172-0 |page=230 |chapter=1955 |quote=Dior's...'A' line consisted of coats, suits and dresses flared out into wide triangles from narrow shoulders. The waistline was the cross bar of the A and could be positioned either under the bust in an Empire manner or low down on the hips.}} both of a geometric triangular shaping. In silhouette, the minidresses of the mid-1960s were basically abbreviated versions{{cite journal |last1=Doonan |first1=Simon |title=Zee Future Fashion Eez Cool! Ungaro, Gernreich Still Cut It |journal=The New York Observer |date=2001-10-01 |url=https://observer.com/2001/10/zee-future-fashion-eez-cool-ungaro-gernreich-still-cut-it/ |access-date=2022-01-24 |quote=I...begged [Emanuel Ungaro] to decode the enigma of space-age chic...'Courrèges et moi...work[ed] for Balenciaga....Balenciaga was obsessed with cut and structure and architecture....[W]e chop 20 centimeters off the skirt, and, voila, le space age'.}} of the shift dress and trapeze dress,{{cite magazine |title=Fashion: Up, Up & Away |magazine=Time |date=1967-12-01 |volume=90 |issue=22 |page=85 |url=https://time.com/vault/issue/1967-12-01/page/78/ |access-date=2024-02-12 |quote=Once dresses began falling loosely from the shoulders, without a pinched-in waist, hemlines were free to rise without destroying the proportion of the line.}}{{cite book |last1=Heathcote |first1=Phyllis W. |title=1966 Britannica Book of the Year: Events of 1965 |publisher=Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc. |pages=297 |chapter=Fashion and Dress |quote=The smooth trapeze line basic to the Courrèges look had been generally adopted...}}{{cite book |last1=Howell |first1=Georgina |title=In Vogue: Sixty Years of Celebrities and Fashion from British Vogue |date=1978 |publisher=Penguin Books Ltd. |location=Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England |isbn=0-14-00-4955-X |page=292 |chapter=1966 |quote=Everywhere, from the couture to the ready-to-wear, the favourite dress is the briefest triangle, taking no account of the waist.}}{{cite book |last1=Mulvagh |first1=Jane |title=Vogue History of 20th Century Fashion |date=1988 |publisher=Viking, the Penguin Group |location=London, England |isbn=0-670-80172-0 |page=287 |chapter=1966 |quote=...[T]he mini dominated the spring collections in all the fashion centres. The silhouette fell from the neck or shoulders to a free-swinging hem...}} with Paco Rabanne's famous metal and plastic minidresses of 1966 and 1967 following the trapeze line and most of Rudi Gernreich's following the shift line. Mary Quant and other British designers, as well as Betsey Johnson in the US,{{cite magazine |title=Fashion: Up, Up & Away |magazine=Time |date=1967-12-01 |volume=90 |issue=22 |page=81 |url=https://time.com/vault/issue/1967-12-01/page/78/ |access-date=2024-02-12 |quote=...Betsey Johnson...ranks as the leading popularizer of the mini in the U.S.}} also showed minidresses that resembled elongated rugby jerseys, body-skimming but not tight. When skirts were worn alone, they tended to sit on the hips rather than holding the waist, called hipster minis if they were really low on the hips.{{cite book |last1=Blackwell |first1=Betsy Talbot |title=The American Peoples Encyclopedia Yearbook 1967: Events and Personalities of 1966 |publisher=Grolier Incorporated |page=216 |chapter=Fashions |quote=Another shape in the 1966 closet was the hip-slung hip-skirt. It could be the...halfway-up-the-thigh miniskirt or a mere inch or two above the knee....[T]he [hip-slung hip-skirt] was practically the summer uniform.}} The fashionable forms of the microminis of the later 1960s were also not tight, often looking somewhat tunic-like{{cite book |last1=Laver |first1=James |title=The Concise History of Costume and Fashion |date=1969 |publisher=Charles Scribner's Sons |location=New York |isbn=0-684-13744-5 |page=266 |chapter=Chapter Ten: The Last Thirty Years |quote=...[A] young woman of today bears the closest possible resemblance to a young man of the medieval period...i.e. the doublet-and-hose of (say) 1490.}} and in fabrics like Qiana.{{cite journal |last1=Kosbetz |first1=Herbert |title=World of Seventh Ave. |journal=The New York Times |date=1971-12-12 |page=F13 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1971/12/12/archives/qiana-threading-way-to-top-jump-seen-in-usage-of-manmade-silky.html |access-date=2022-05-28 |quote=Qiana, a silk‐like fiber in the nylon family, has come into the wide‐use area of man‐made fibers...More and more, the fiber is going into apparel fabrics...When the fiber was introduced three years ago [1968], it was confined almost entirely to the couture trade...The fiber falls in the category of nylon owing to its molecular structure...Fabrics made of the fiber offer color clarity, luster, dyeability and draping qualities equal to or better than silk fabrics, and in terms of washability, they are said to outperform any other manmade fiber.}}

In addition, sixties miniskirts were not worn with high heels but with flats or low heels,{{cite book |last1=Taylor |first1=Angela |title=Collier's 1967 Year Book Covering the Year 1966 |publisher=Crowell Collier and MacMillan, Inc. |page=210 |chapter=Fashion |quote=As hemlines rose, heels dropped.}}{{cite book |last1=Mulvagh |first1=Jane |title=Vogue History of 20th Century Fashion |date=1988 |publisher=Viking, the Penguin Group |location=London, England |isbn=0-670-80172-0 |page=245 |chapter=1957-1967 |quote=Every fashion-conscious girl was wearing the mini, flat pumps and the Vidal Sassoon haircut and pale lipstick.}}{{cite journal |last1=Emerson |first1=Gloria |author-link=Gloria Emerson |title=Paris: Strictly for Small-Boned Girls |journal=The New York Times |date=1966-01-27 |page=37 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1966/01/27/archives/paris-strictly-for-smallboned-girls.html |quote=Throughout the collections, there were more flat-heeled shoes than ever before. No designer, it seems, would dream of showing a short short skirt with high heels.}}{{cite book |last1=Hasson |first1=Rachelle |title=World Book Year Book 1968: Events of 1967 |publisher=Field Enterprises Educational Corporation |location=Chicago, Illinois, USA |page=338 |chapter=Fashion |quote=...[S]hoes were set on low, chunky heels, with toes newly rounded or squared. These styles, based on a wall-to-wall flatness, attracted ornamentation...}} for a natural stance,{{cite journal |last1=Giraud |first1=Francoise |title=After Courrèges, What Future for the Haute Couture? |journal=The New York Times |date=1965-09-12 |page=110 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1965/09/12/archives/after-courreges-what-future-for-the-haute-couture-after-courreges.html?searchResultPosition=13 |quote=A dress by Courrèges...is something which completely modifies the balance of the body because it is impossible to wear it with high heels.}}{{cite journal |last1=Bender |first1=Marylin |title=This Year Even the Shoe Designers are Confused |journal=The New York Times |date=1970-02-23 |page=46 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1970/02/23/archives/this-year-even-the-shoe-designers-are-confused.html?searchResultPosition=5 |access-date=2024-08-24 |quote=David Dulberg, shoe buyer of Saks Fifth Avenue,...said: '...Gals are put together differently today...They're not only slim but their whole stance is different. They're not pitched forward on high heels'...}} a natural stride,{{cite journal |last1=Morris |first1=Bernadine |title=Short Skirt Puts Focus on the Leg |journal=The New York Times |date=1964-11-21 |page=18 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1964/11/21/archives/short-skirt-puts-focus-on-the-leg.html |access-date=2023-04-05 |quote=A fashion mannequin who has been wearing her skirts short...observed that high heels were out because 'you cannot run around in them without looking cheap when your hems are above your knees'.}}{{cite journal |last1=Bender |first1=Marylin |title=This Year Even the Shoe Designers are Confused |journal=The New York Times |date=1970-02-23 |page=46 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1970/02/23/archives/this-year-even-the-shoe-designers-are-confused.html?searchResultPosition=5 |access-date=2024-08-24 |quote='Why am I doing flats? You feel you want to move along these days...," [shoe designer Beth Levine] said. 'You feel younger in flats...'}}{{cite book |last1=Blackwell |first1=Betsy Talbot |title=The American Peoples Encyclopedia 1966 Encyclopedia Yearbook: Events of 1965 |publisher=Grolier Incorporated |page=233 |chapter=Fashions |quote=Shoes were heeled low, the better to go.}} and to enhance the fashionable child-like look of the time,{{cite book |last1=Peake |first1=Andy |title=Made for Walking |date=2018 |publisher=Schiffer Fashion Press |location=Atglen, Pennsylvania |isbn=978-0-7643-5499-1 |page=72 |chapter=The Age of the Boot |quote=One effect of the sixties fashion 'youthquake' was a desire on the part of designers to make grown women look like little girls.}}{{cite book |last1=Mulvagh |first1=Jane |title=Vogue History of 20th Century Fashion |date=1988 |publisher=Viking, the Penguin Group |location=London, England |isbn=0-670-80172-0 |page=241 |chapter=1957-1967 |quote=The fashion was to look as child-like as possible – coltish, long legs, flat torso and attention focused on a big baby-eyed head.}}{{cite journal |last1=Emerson |first1=Gloria |title=Saint Laurent: Bright, Fresh Clothes For a Baby-Faced Blonde |journal=The New York Times |date=1965-08-07 |page=11 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1965/08/07/archives/saint-laurent-bright-fresh-clothes-for-a-babyfaced-blonde.html |access-date=2023-04-16 |quote=...Saint Laurent...has so many girlish clothes in his collection that [model] Birgit, who is 20, looked just 14....[and] as if...she had never tried on high heels.}}{{cite book |last1=Zahony |first1=Kathryn |title=World Book Year Book 1968: Events of 1967 |publisher=Field Enterprises Educational Corporation |location=Chicago, Illinois, USA |page=337 |chapter=The Fragile Silhouette of Fashion |quote=...[F]ashion leaders had...increasingly erased the boundaries between children and adults. More and more, grown-up women wore shoes without heels, hems that exposed not only the knee but also part of the thigh, [and] dresses without waistlines or bust seams.}}{{cite journal |editor1-last=Tilberis |editor1-first=Elizabeth |title=Vogue 1960-1969 |journal=Vogue 75 Years |date=1991 |page=97 |publisher=The Condé Nast Publications Ltd. |location=London, England |quote=Before long, grown women were...attempting knock-kneed childish postures, their toes turned in, in little flat shoes.}} seen as a reaction to 1950s artifice like stiletto heels,{{cite journal |last1=Adler |first1=Nancy J. |title=Only in Los Angeles: Courreges in a Factory |journal=The New York Times |date=1967-11-15 |page=50 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1967/11/15/archives/only-in-los-angeles-courreges-in-a-factory.html?searchResultPosition=4 |quote=Other Courrèges sentiments:...'If you put high heels on 3 or 4-year-old children they will look old. Shoes with no heels can benefit women and take 10 years off their age'.}} constrained waists, padded busts, and movement-inhibiting skirts.{{cite journal |last1=Bender |first1=Marylin |title=Is This Courreges's Vision of Space-Age Women? |journal=The New York Times |date=1965-05-28 |page=28 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1965/05/28/archives/is-this-courregess-vision-of-spaceage-women.html |quote=[Courrèges's]...intention is to liberate young, fast-moving moderns from corsets, high heels, and other fashion appurtenances that strike him as fossilized vestiges...}} Another way youth was indicated in the new short skirts was through using models with slim but muscular legs, as preferred by designers André Courrèges{{cite journal |last1=Peterson |first1=Patricia |title=Courreges is Star of Best Show Seen So Far |journal=The New York Times |date=1964-08-03 |page=14 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1964/08/03/archives/courreges-is-star-of-best-show-seen-so-far.html?searchResultPosition=9 |quote=Courrèges...boots...rise to the first swell of the calf...}}{{cite journal |last1=Giraud |first1=Francoise |title=After Courrèges, What Future for the Haute Couture? |journal=The New York Times |date=1965-09-12 |page=110 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1965/09/12/archives/after-courreges-what-future-for-the-haute-couture-after-courreges.html?searchResultPosition=13 |quote=Courrèges...models...walk..like young athletes in low-heeled boots...}} and Emanuel Ungaro{{cite journal |last1=Emerson |first1=Gloria |author-link=Gloria Emerson |title=The Unchanging Mme Gres and the Mischievous Mr. Capucci |journal=The New York Times |date=1966-07-31 |page=F46 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1966/08/01/archives/the-unchanging-mme-gres-and-the-mischievous-mr-capucci.html |access-date=2023-05-30 |quote=...Ungaro's...models, with their hockey player legs...}} at the time. The designer Mary Quant was quoted as saying that "short short skirts" indicated youthfulness, which was seen as desirable, fashion-wise.

File:Swinging London 1969 (JOKAMAL2A02-38).tif wearing a minidress, 1969]]

In the UK, skirts shortened to less than {{convert|24|inch}} were classed as children's garments rather than adult clothes. Children's clothing was not subject to purchase tax whereas adult clothing was.{{cite web|author = premierludwig | title = Trends Of The Mid-1960s workshop | date = 19 July 2005| website = Vintage Fashion Guild | url = http://forums.vintagefashionguild.org/threads/trends-of-the-mid-1960s-workshop.10771/ | access-date = 31 January 2017}} The avoidance of tax meant that the price was correspondingly less.{{cite web | last = Livraghi | first = Giancarlo | title = The pitfalls of fashion | website = off-line | date = 2002 | url = http://www.gandalf.it/offline/off50-en.htm | access-date=31 January 2017 }}{{cite web | last = Thomas | first = Pauline | title = The 60s Mini Skirt 1960s Fashion History | website = Fashion-Era.com | date = 2014 | url = http://www.fashion-era.com/the_1960s_mini.htm | access-date = 31 January 2017}}

Stockings with suspenders (American English: "garters") were not considered practical with miniskirts and were replaced with coloured tights.{{cite book |last1=Howell |first1=Georgina |title=In Vogue: Sixty Years of Celebrities and Fashion from British Vogue |date=1978 |publisher=Penguin Books Ltd. |location=Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England |isbn=0-14-00-4955-X |page=288 |chapter=1965 |quote=Skirts rise to mid-thigh, girls change over from stockings to tights and the London look becomes international.}}{{cite book |last1=Hasson |first1=Rachelle |title=World Book Year Book 1968: Events of 1967 |publisher=Field Enterprises Educational Corporation |location=Chicago, Illinois, USA |page=336 |chapter=Fashion |quote=Mini-skirts made pantie hose...popular because they not only gave the leg a hip-to-toe smoothness, but eliminated the possibility of garter-show. Women showed off their legs in peekaboo fishnets, wide windowpane effects, spidery weaves,...delicate lacy looks[,]...bold zigzag and striped patterns and whimsical floral designs....The entire color spectrum...[was] worn... For evening, legs sparkled in glittery copper, gold, and silver...}}{{cite book|last=Laver|first=James|title=Costume and Fashion: A Concise History|year=2002|publisher=Thames & Hudson, Ltd. |location=London |isbn=978-0-500-20348-4 |pages=261–2}} Legs could also be covered with knee-high socks{{cite book |last1=Peake |first1=Andy |title=Made for Walking |date=2018 |publisher=Schiffer Fashion Press |location=Atglen, Pennsylvania |isbn=978-0-7643-5499-1 |page=72 |chapter=The Age of the Boot |quote=During the mid-sixties...the shoe had a new ally – the kneesock.}}{{cite journal |last1=Emerson |first1=Gloria |title=Andre Courreges: A Fashion Star Can Make a Comeback, Too |journal=The New York Times |date=1967-02-04 |page=14 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1967/02/04/archives/andre-courreges-a-fashion-star-can-make-a-comeback-too.html |access-date=2023-04-05 |quote=The Courrèges girl this spring will wear thin white wool socks...[Courrèges] staff...wore...knee socks...}} or various heights of boots, lower-calf height in 1964–65,{{cite journal |last1=Morris |first1=Bernadine |title=Short Skirt Puts Focus on the Leg |journal=The New York Times |date=1964-11-21 |page=18 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1964/11/21/archives/short-skirt-puts-focus-on-the-leg.html |access-date=2023-04-05 |quote=André Courrèges...solved the leg problem...with a boot that...stop[ped] just below the fleshy part of the calf....Golo is copying the Courrèges boot in white leather...}}{{cite book |last1=Peake |first1=Andy |title=Made for Walking |date=2018 |publisher=Schiffer Fashion Press |location=Atglen, Pennsylvania |isbn=978-0-7643-5499-1 |page=63 |chapter=Chapeau Melon et Bottes de Cuir |quote=...[A boot that] hovered in the region between ankle and midcalf...was probably the most common fashion boot of the years 1963 to 1965.}} knee-heights throughout the period,{{cite journal |last1=Peterson |first1=Patricia |title=Valentino's Collection is Enthusiastically Greeted |journal=The New York Times |date=1964-07-23 |page=14 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1964/07/23/archives/valentinos-collection-is-enthusiastically-greeted.html |access-date=2023-08-07 |quote=...short skirts with knee-high boots...}}{{cite book |last1=Heathcote |first1=Phyllis W. |title=Britannica Book of the Year 1968: Events of 1967 |publisher=Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., William Benton |page=342 |chapter=Fashion and Dress |quote=Boots continued to be immensely popular, the preferred style for 1967 being the 'peel-on,' knee-long 'stocking-boot' in very fine leather or leather substitute.}} over-the-knee and thigh-high boots more 1967–69,{{cite book |last1=Peake |first1=Andy |title=Made for Walking |date=2018 |publisher=Schiffer Fashion Press |location=Atglen, Pennsylvania |isbn=978-0-7643-5499-1 |page=60 |chapter=Chapeau Melon et Bottes de Cuir |quote=Cuissardes [thigh-high boots] hung around for much of the sixties. They really took off at the end of the decade...}}{{cite journal |last1=Emerson |first1=Gloria |title=The Collections are On in Rome: Coats Long, Boots High |journal=The New York Times |date=1967-07-17 |page=24 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1967/07/17/archives/the-collections-are-on-in-rome-coats-long-boots-high.html |access-date=2023-05-06 |quote=If knees don't show, it is only because most designers like legs covered with soft, narrow boots coming up to the thighs.}} and even boot-hose or body boots (tights incorporating a shoe sole and heel to form a waist-high boot), often in stretch vinyl.{{cite book |last1=Hasson |first1=Rachelle |title=World Book Year Book 1968: Events of 1967 |publisher=Field Enterprises Educational Corporation |location=Chicago, Illinois, USA |page=336 |chapter=Fashion |quote=Women...fancied high boots as a means of covering their new length of leg. High-rise stretch vinyl or patent leather provided glovelike sleekness...Boots stretched to the knees, to the thighs, or even to cover the entire leg like [a] fisherman's hip boots.}}{{cite journal |last1=Emerson |first1=Gloria |title=The Collections are On in Rome: Coats Long, Boots High |journal=The New York Times |date=1967-07-17 |page=24 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1967/07/17/archives/the-collections-are-on-in-rome-coats-long-boots-high.html |access-date=2023-05-06 |quote=The body boot, which covers the entire leg and is...attached to panties, is the real craze. It is worn under microdresses...}} Sandal straps or laces might crisscross or otherwise rise up the leg,{{cite journal |last1=Morris |first1=Bernadine |title=Short Skirt Puts Focus on the Leg |journal=The New York Times |date=1964-11-21 |page=18 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1964/11/21/archives/short-skirt-puts-focus-on-the-leg.html |access-date=2023-04-05 |quote=Jacques Tiffeau, another advocate of short skirts, used Roger Vivier shoes with laces that wrapped around the legs and ended in a bow under the knees...}}{{cite book |last1=Howell |first1=Georgina |title=In Vogue: Sixty Years of Celebrities and Fashion from British Vogue |date=1978 |publisher=Penguin Books Ltd. |location=Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England |isbn=0-14-00-4955-X |page=292 |chapter=1966 |quote=...silver shoes laced up the leg...}} even as high as the thigh,{{cite book |last1=Dubois |first1=Ruth Mary |title=The Americana Annual 1971: An Encyclopedia of the Events of 1970 |publisher=Americana Corporation |page=290 |chapter=Fashion |quote=Sandals laced all the way up the leg...}} and body paints were offered for a time to add colour to the leg in more individualised ways than wearing tights.{{cite book |last1=Mulvagh |first1=Jane |title=Vogue History of 20th Century Fashion |date=1988 |publisher=Viking, the Penguin Group |location=London, England |isbn=0-670-80172-0 |page=295 |chapter=1967 |quote=...Courrèges, Paco Rabanne and Ungaro...refused to give up the...short-skirted mode. Their 'bare-as-you-dare' styles prompted Coty to introduce a new line of cosmetics – body paint.}}{{cite book |last1=Howell |first1=Georgina |title=In Vogue: Sixty Years of Celebrities and Fashion from British Vogue |date=1978 |publisher=Penguin Books Ltd. |location=Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England |isbn=0-14-00-4955-X |page=269 |chapter=1960-1969: The Changing Face |quote=Face and body painting were a feature of the late 1960s...}}

During the late 1960s, as most skirts became shorter and shorter,{{cite book |last1=Howell |first1=Georgina |title=In Vogue: Sixty Years of Celebrities and Fashion from British Vogue |date=1978 |publisher=Penguin Books Ltd. |location=Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England |isbn=0-14-00-4955-X |page=296 |chapter=1967-68 |quote=The micro skirt shrinks even more...}}{{cite journal |last1=Morris |first1=Bernadine |title=Gernreich Finds New Way to Startle |journal=The New York Times |date=1968-10-11 |page=54 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1968/10/11/archives/gernreich-finds-new-way-to-startle.html?searchResultPosition=10 |quote=The lower part of the [Rudi Gernreich] costume is...what passes for a skirt. The skirt measures little more than a foot from waistline to hem, and it synchronizes with the dresses. These...don't reach to the fingertips.}} designers began offering a few alternatives.{{cite book |last1=Howell |first1=Georgina |title=In Vogue: Sixty Years of Celebrities and Fashion from British Vogue |date=1978 |publisher=Penguin Books Ltd. |location=Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England |isbn=0-14-00-4955-X |page=300 |chapter=1969 |quote=Skirts are mini, knee-length, midi or maxi, 'Everything goes so long as it works for you'.}}{{cite book |last1=Mulvagh |first1=Jane |title=Vogue History of 20th Century Fashion |date=1988 |publisher=Viking, the Penguin Group |location=London, England |isbn=0-670-80172-0 |page=311 |chapter=1969 |quote=The hemline was irrelevant; the length of a woman's skirt now depended on personal taste. The international collections endorsed variety, showing minis, midis, maxis and trousers.}} Calf-length midi-skirts were introduced in 1966–67,{{cite book |last1=Heathcote |first1=Phyllis W. |title=The 1967 Compton Yearbook: A Summary and Interpretation of the Events of 1966 to Supplement Compton's Pictured Encyclopedia |publisher=F. E. Compton Co., Division of Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., William Benton |page=254 |chapter=Fashion |quote=...[I]n 1966,...trend-setting fashion designers began to lower hemlines.}}{{cite book |last1=Mulvagh |first1=Jane |title=Vogue History of 20th Century Fashion |date=1988 |publisher=Viking, the Penguin Group |location=London, England |isbn=0-670-80172-0 |page=291 |chapter=1966 |quote=...[T]he midi had definitely arrived...The hemline was only sixteen inches from the ground...The intention...was to train the...eye down from the mini to the midi by showing one over the other.}} and floor-length maxi-skirts appeared around the same time{{cite magazine |title=Paris Fall Styles Full of Surprises |magazine=Life |date=1966-09-02 |volume=61 |issue=10 |page=63 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=61UEAAAAMBAJ&dq=pierre+cardin&pg=PA62 |quote=...[G]reatcoats with...long hemlines are the first strong showing of well-below-the-knee styles from Paris in 10 years...}}{{cite book |last1=Mulvagh |first1=Jane |title=Vogue History of 20th Century Fashion |date=1988 |publisher=Viking, the Penguin Group |location=London, England |isbn=0-670-80172-0 |page=308 |chapter=1968 |quote=By the autumn the maxi coat had arrived in London...}} after being seen on hippies first around 1965–66.{{cite book |last1=Cassini |first1=Oleg |title=Collier's 1966 Year Book Covering the Year 1965 |publisher=Crowell Collier and MacMillan, Inc. |page=214 |chapter=Fashion |quote=...the 'granny' dress, a new discovery,...a loose, ankle-length cotton dress with puffed sleeves and a plain neck. Its use was rather limited to very young people...}} Like miniskirts, these were overwhelmingly casual in feel and simply constructed to a two-straight-side-seams A-line shape.{{cite book |last1=Mulvagh |first1=Jane |title=Vogue History of 20th Century Fashion |date=1988 |publisher=Viking, the Penguin Group |location=London, England |isbn=0-670-80172-0 |page=245 |chapter=1957-1967 |quote=...[I]n Paris...couturiers had not changed the silhouette but simply dropped the hem...by two and a half feet.}} Women in the late sixties welcomed these new styles as options but did not necessarily wear them,{{cite book |last1=Heathcote |first1=Phyllis W. |title=The 1967 Compton Yearbook: A Summary and Interpretation of the Events of 1966 to Supplement Compton's Pictured Encyclopedia |publisher=F. E. Compton Co., Division of Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., William Benton |page=254 |chapter=Fashion |quote=...[L]onger skirts were still more prophetic than prevalent...}}{{cite journal |last1=Emerson |first1=Gloria |title=On the Rome Scene, Knee is Seen |journal=The New York Times |date=1968-01-17 |page=50 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1968/01/17/archives/on-the-rome-scene-knee-is-seen.html |access-date=2023-07-13 |quote=Women...swear that they simply cannot carry off...dresses that flop around the shins...}}{{cite book |last1=Winkelman |first1=Anne |title=Standard Reference Encyclopedia Yearbook 1968 |publisher=Standard Reference Library, Inc. |location=New York, USA |page=218 |chapter=Fashion |quote=...[A]lthough the trousers took, the midis and maxis didn't – most fashion-wise women had theirs shortened to...three to five inches above the knees...}} feeling societal pressure to shorten their skirts instead.{{cite journal |last1=Bender |first1=Marylin |title=Questions Being Raised with Hems |journal=The New York Times |date=1964-06-12 |page=39 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1964/06/12/archives/questions-being-raised-with-hems.html?searchResultPosition=7 |access-date=2024-03-30 |quote=Whether or not a woman intends to expose her lower thighs next fall, she is undoubtedly discovering that she has to do something immediately about the hemlines on last summer's clothes lest she look dowdy.}}{{cite news |last1=Hyde |first1=Nina |author-link=Nina Hyde|title=Miniskirts: The Height of Fashion |newspaper=The Washington Post |date=1982-05-10 |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/1982/05/10/miniskirts-the-height-of-fashion/6adbec55-b555-449d-9f16-86027a5ccd2e/ |access-date=2022-04-04 |quote=...[In] the late 1960s,...minis were de rigueur and lots of grown women as well as kids followed the fashion and shortened their hems several inches above the knee.}}{{cite journal |last1=Barmash |first1=Isidore |title=Minis or Midis? Girls and Stores Dying to Know |journal=The New York Times |date=1970-03-15 |page=137 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1970/03/15/archives/midis-or-minis-girls-and-stores-dying-to-know-mini-midi-all-dying.html |access-date=2022-04-04 |quote=Women who not long ago gnashed their teeth over the miniskirt, wondering if they dared to imitate their daughters and wear it, finally decided only a relatively few months ago that they would risk it. The result was the moderate‐mini, the one to two‐inch rise above the knee, which is pretty much what is being worn on Main Street America today.}}

Decades later, starting in the late nineties, the term midi-skirt would be expanded to refer to any calf-length skirt from any era, including skirts of that length from the 1930s, 1950s, and 1980s of any shape,{{cite journal |last1=Chrisman-Campbell |first1=Kimberly |title=The Midi Skirt, Divider of Nations |journal=The Atlantic |date=2014-09-09 |url=https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2014/09/the-return-of-the-midi-skirt/379543/ |access-date=2022-04-04 |quote=Today, the term 'midi' is applied to knee-length skirts as often as tea-length skirts, and pencil skirts as well as flowing A-lines. But it originally denoted a specific, unforgiving shape: not mid-leg, but mid-calf, widening from the waist to four inches below the knee.}} and the term maxi-skirt would be expanded to apply to any floor-length skirt from any era, including ballgowns. This was not the case during a period from the late 1960s to the 1980s, when the term midi-skirt only applied to casual, simply-cut A-line calf-length skirts of the late sixties and earliest seventies and the term maxi-skirt only applied to casual, simply-cut A-line floor-length skirts of the late sixties and earliest seventies. Even the full, calf-length skirts worn from the mid-seventies to the early eighties were not called midi-skirts at the time,{{cite journal |last1=Morris |first1=Bernadine |title=Shades of the Midi – Longer Skirts Make Hesitant Comeback |journal=The New York Times |date=1973-06-30 |page=36 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1973/06/20/archives/shades-of-the-midi-longer-skirts-make-hesitant-comeback-difficult.html?searchResultPosition=20 |quote=Neither Halston — nor any other of the designers lengthening skirts — are calling it the 'midi look'.}}{{cite journal |last1=Salmans |first1=Sandra |title=Seventh Avenue |journal=The New York Times |date=1974-08-25 |page=96 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1974/08/25/archives/seventh-avenue.html |access-date=2021-12-01 |quote=Although the latest [1974] look—known as the Big Look...—is decidedly longer than recent hemlines, both its proponents and its adversaries say that any resemblance to the midi is purely coincidental. 'You can't compare it to the midi, which was just a longer skirt,' maintains Norman Wechsler, president of Saks Fifth Avenue.}}{{cite journal |last1=Morris |first1=Bernadine |title=Why Nobody's Paying Much Attention to Spring Couture |journal=The New York Times |date=1974-02-04 |page=24 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1974/02/04/archives/why-nobodys-paying-much-attention-to-spring-couture-special-to-the.html |access-date=2022-06-22 |quote=What makes [1974 long skirts] different from the long skirts of 1970? They're wider and consequently, more graceful and easier to wear.}} as that was by 1974 considered a passė term restricted only to a specific shape of skirt from the late sixties and earliest seventies.

As designers attempted to require women to switch to midi-skirts in 1969 and 1970, women, especially in the US,{{cite book |last1=Dubois |first1=Ruth Mary |title=The Americana Annual 1971: An Encyclopedia of the Events of 1970 |publisher=Americana Corporation |isbn=0-7172-0102-3 |page=291 |chapter=Fashion: The War of the Hemlines |date=9 March 1971 |quote=For spring 1970 most American and European designers featured longer lengths. They caught on in London and Paris, but not in the United States...}} responded by ignoring them,{{cite journal |last1=Morris |first1=Bernadine |title=Women are Stealing a March on Short Skirts |journal=The New York Times |date=1987-04-25 |page=1 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1987/04/25/style/women-are-stealing-a-march-on-short-skirts.html |access-date=2022-04-04 |quote=The sudden drop in hemlines in 1970 caused a revolt in this country against fashion dictatorship....In the collections for fall 1970, hemlines descended abruptly, by as much as 18 inches, from mid-thigh to the lower calf....The protests were immediate. Women declared that they would no longer be dictated to by fashion designers. They refused to buy long skirts. Stores suffered and many manufacturers went out of business.}} continuing to wear minis and microminis{{cite book |last1=Mulvagh |first1=Jane |title=Vogue History of 20th Century Fashion |date=1988 |publisher=Viking, the Penguin Group |location=London, England |isbn=0-670-80172-0 |page=308 |chapter=1968 |quote=American women had not accepted the midi or maxi hemlines, preferring the leggy mini...}} and turning to trousers{{cite journal |last1=Morris |first1=Bernadine |title=Women are Stealing a March on Short Skirts |journal=The New York Times |date=1987-04-25 |page=1 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1987/04/25/style/women-are-stealing-a-march-on-short-skirts.html |access-date=2022-04-04 |quote=Fashionable women everywhere turned to pants....Trousers continued as part of the fashion uniform...}} like those endorsed by Yves Saint Laurent in 1968,{{cite journal |last1=Morris |first1=Bernadine |title=Even the Restaurateurs Concede That Pants are Fashionable |journal=The New York Times |date=1968-10-07 |page=54 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1968/10/07/archives/even-the-restaurateurs-concede-that-pants-are-fashionable.html |access-date=2023-07-13 |quote=Pants...have the endorsement of...Yves Saint Laurent, who devoted a good part of his last Paris collection to them and now is selling them like blue jeans...The wider cut to the legs has won many adherents.}} a trend that would dominate the 1970s.

{{multiple image |

|width1 = 125|image1 = Mary Quant in a minidress (1966).jpg |caption1 = Mary Quant wearing a minidress (1966)

|width2 = 146|image2 = Diabolo minidress at Mary Quant fashion show, Utrecht, 24 March 1969 crop.jpg |caption2 = A Mary Quant minidress from 1969}}

Several designers have been credited with the invention of the 1960s miniskirt, most significantly the London-based designer Mary Quant and the Parisian André Courrèges. Although Quant reportedly named the skirt after her favourite make of car, the Mini,{{cite web|last1=Foreman |first1=Katya |title=Short but sweet: The miniskirt |url=http://www.bbc.com/culture/story/20140523-short-but-sweet-the-miniskirt |publisher=BBC |access-date=9 June 2016 |date=21 October 2014}}{{cite book |last1=Miles |first1=Barry |title=The British invasion: the music, the times, the era |date=2009 |publisher=Sterling |location=New York, NY |isbn=9781402769764 |page=203|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=r8xbaIlrUREC&pg=PA203}} there is no consensus as to who designed it first. Valerie Steele has noted that the claim that Quant was first is more convincingly supported by evidence than the equivalent Courrèges claim.{{cite book |last1=Steele |first1=Valerie |title=Fifty years of fashion : new look to now |date=2000 |publisher=Yale University Press|location=New Haven |isbn=9780300087383 |pages=51–64 |edition=English |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=xqEt6Dpb4TYC&pg=PA52}} However, the contemporary fashion journalist Marit Allen, who edited the influential "Young Ideas" pages for UK Vogue, firmly stated that the British designer John Bates was the first to offer fashionable miniskirts.{{cite web |title=Garments worn by Marit Allen |date=13 July 2011 |url=http://www.vam.ac.uk/content/articles/g/garments-worn-by-marit-allen/ |publisher=Victoria and Albert Museum |access-date=12 July 2012}} Other designers, including Pierre Cardin and Yves Saint Laurent, had also been raising hemlines at the same time.{{cite book |last1=Polan |first1=Brenda |last2=Tredre |first2=Roger |title=The great fashion designers |date=2009 |publisher=Berg Publishers |location=Oxford |isbn=9780857851741 |pages=[https://archive.org/details/greatfashiondesi0000pola/page/123 123]–125 |edition=English |url=https://archive.org/details/greatfashiondesi0000pola|url-access=registration |chapter=André Courrèges}}

;Mary Quant

The miniskirt is one of the garments most widely associated with Mary Quant.{{cite book |last1=Horton |first1=Ros |last2=Simmons |first2=Sally|title=Women who changed the world : fifty inspirational women who shaped history |date=2006 |publisher=Quercus |location=London |isbn=9781847240262 |page=170}} Quant herself is ambivalent about the claim that she invented the miniskirt, stating that her customers should take credit, as she herself wore very short skirts, and they requested even shorter hemlines for themselves.{{cite book |last1=Polan |first1=Brenda |last2=Tredre |first2=Roger |title=The great fashion designers |date=2009 |publisher=Berg Publishers |location=Oxford |isbn=9780857851741 |pages=[https://archive.org/details/greatfashiondesi0000pola/page/103 103]–105 |edition=English |url=https://archive.org/details/greatfashiondesi0000pola|url-access=registration |chapter=Mary Quant}} Regardless of whether or not Quant invented the miniskirt, it is widely agreed that she was one of its highest-profile champions.{{cite book |last1=Kennedy |first1=Carol |title=From Dynasties to Dotcoms : The Rise, Fall and Reinvention of British Business in the Past 100 Years |date=2003 |publisher=Kogan Page Ltd |location=London |isbn=9780749441272 |page=122 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=9XL5nk5D6woC&pg=PA122}} Contrary to obvious and popular belief, Quant named the garment after the Mini Cooper, a favourite car of hers, stating that the car and the skirt were both "optimistic, exuberant, young, flirty", and complemented each other.{{cite web|url=https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/articles/z4w8rj6|access-date=11 October 2019|website=BBC|date=2019|title=The stories behind five global fashion trends}}

Quant had started experimenting with shorter skirts in the late 1950s, when she started making her own designs up to stock her boutique on the King's Road. Among her inspirations was the memory of seeing a young tap-dancer wearing a "tiny skirt over thick black tights", influencing her designs for young, active women who did not wish to resemble their mothers. In addition to the miniskirt, Quant is often credited with inventing the coloured and patterned tights that tended to accompany the garment, although their creation is also attributed to the Spanish couturier Cristóbal Balenciaga who offered harlequin-patterned tights in 1962{{cite book |last=Carter |first=Ernestine |title=The changing world of fashion: 1900 to the present |year=1977 |publisher=Weidenfeld and Nicolson |location=London |isbn=9780297773498 |pages=213 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=AkdEAAAAYAAJ&q=Balenciaga+harlequin}} or to Bates.{{cite book |last1=Lester |first1=Richard |title=John Bates : fashion designer|date=2008|publisher=ACC Editions |location=Woodbridge, Suffolk |isbn=9781851495702|page=43}}

In 2009, a Mary Quant minidress was among the 10 British "design classics" featured on a series of Royal Mail stamps, alongside the Tube map, the Spitfire, and the red telephone box.{{cite news |title=In pictures: Royal Mail's British design classic stamps |url=https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2009/jan/13/stamps-british-design-classics |date=13 January 2009 |access-date=30 September 2022 |work=The Guardian}}

;André Courrèges

Courrèges explicitly claimed that he invented the mini, and accused Quant of only "commercialising" it. He presented short skirts measuring four inches above the knee in January 1965 for that year's Spring/Summer collection, although some sources claim that Courrèges had been designing miniskirts as early as 1961, the year he launched his couture house. The collection, which also included trouser suits and cut-out backs and midriffs, was designed for a new type of athletic, active young woman. Courrèges had presented "above-the-knee" skirts in his August 1964 haute couture presentation which was proclaimed the "best show seen so far" for that season by The New York Times.{{cite news|last1=Peterson|first1=Patricia|title=Courrèges Is Star of Best Show Seen So Far|url=https://www.nytimes.com/1964/08/03/courreges-is-star-of-best-show-seen-so-far.html|access-date=11 January 2016|work=The New York Times|date=3 August 1964}} The Courrèges look, featuring a knit bodystocking with a gabardine miniskirt slung around the hips, was widely copied and plagiarised, much to the designer's chagrin, and it would be 1967 before he again held a press showing for his work. Steele has described Courrèges's work as a "brilliant couture version of youth fashion" whose sophistication far outshone Quant's work, although she champions the Quant claim. Others, such as Jess Cartner-Morley of The Guardian explicitly credit him, rather than Quant, as the miniskirt's creator.{{cite news|last=Cartner-Morley|first=Jess|title=Chelsea girl who instigated a new era|url=https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2000/dec/02/audreygillan|access-date=12 July 2012|newspaper=The Guardian|date=2 December 2000}}

;John Bates and others

File:1965 John Bates for Jean Varon mindress 01.jpg.{{cite book |last1=Lester |first1=Richard |title=John Bates : fashion designer |date=2008 |publisher=ACC Editions |location=Woodbridge, Suffolk |isbn=9781851495702 |page=38}}]]

The idea that John Bates, rather than Quant or Courrèges, innovated the miniskirt had an influential champion in Marit Allen, who as editor of the influential "Young Ideas" pages for UK Vogue, kept track of up-and-coming young designers. In 1966 she chose Bates to design her mini-length wedding outfit in white gabardine and silver PVC. In January 1965 Bates's "skimp dress" with its "short-short skirt" was featured in Vogue, and would later be chosen as the Dress of the Year.{{cite book|last1=Lester|first1=Richard|title=John Bates : fashion designer|date=2008|publisher=ACC Editions|location=Woodbridge, Suffolk|isbn=9781851495702|page=45}}{{cite book |editor1-last=Breward |editor1-first=Christopher |editor2-last=Lister|editor2-first=Jenny|editor3-last=Gilbert|editor3-first=David |title=Swinging sixties : fashion in London and beyond ; 1955 – 1970|date=2006|publisher=V&A Publ. |location=London |isbn=9781851774845 |page=31}}{{cite web|title=Dress of the Year walkthrough|url=http://www.fashionmuseum.co.uk/galleries/dress-year|website=Fashion Museum, Bath|date=10 November 2014|publisher=Bath & North East Somerset Council 2015|access-date=21 October 2015|archive-date=26 September 2015|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150926095217/http://www.fashionmuseum.co.uk/galleries/dress-year|url-status=dead}} Bates was also famous for having designed mini-coats and dresses and other outfits for Emma Peel (played by Diana Rigg) in the TV series The Avengers, although the manufacturers blocked his request for patterned tights to enable Emma Peel to fight in skirts if necessary.

An alternative origin story for the miniskirt came from Barbara Hulanicki of the London boutique Biba, who recalled that in 1966 she received a delivery of stretchy jersey skirts that had shrunk drastically in transit. Much to her surprise, the ten-inch long garments rapidly sold out.{{cite web|last1=Staff writer|title=Barbara Hulanicki and Biba|url=http://www.vam.ac.uk/content/articles/b/biba,-barbara-hulanicki/|publisher=Victoria and Albert Museum|access-date=21 October 2015}}

In 1967 Rudi Gernreich was among the first American designers to offer miniskirts, in the face of strongly worded censure and criticism from American couturiers James Galanos and Norman Norell.{{cite magazine|last1=Staff writer|title=Fashion: Up, Up & Away|magazine=TIME |date=1 December 1967}}{{subscription required}} Criticism of the miniskirt also came from the Paris couturier Coco Chanel, who declared the style "disgusting" despite being herself famed for supporting shorter skirts in the 1920s.{{cite magazine |title=Fashion: Stopping the Escalation |magazine=Time |date=1966-08-05 |url=https://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,836160,00.html |access-date=2022-06-12 |quote=The miniskirt? 'Dégoütant' [disgusting], snapped Coco Chanel....And so Chanel stayed Chanel, with neatly fitted suits just covering the kneecap.}}{{cite journal |last1=Giraud |first1=Francoise |title=After Courrèges, What Future for the Haute Couture? |journal=The New York Times |date=1965-09-12 |page=110 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1965/09/12/archives/after-courreges-what-future-for-the-haute-couture-after-courreges.html?searchResultPosition=13 |quote=Courrèges...does everything [Chanel] hates: clothes without waistlines, baring the knee and the upper arm. 'Everything that is most ugly in a woman,' she says.}}

File:Twirling model in miniskirt and tights at Mary Quant fashion show, Utrecht, 24 March 1969 crop.jpg.]]

Owing to Quant's position in the heart of fashionable "Swinging London", the miniskirt was able to spread beyond a simple street fashion into a major international trend, with not only significant aesthetic value but also considerable political worth.{{cite web |author=Pedro Vasconcelos |url=https://www.vogue.pt/english-version-mini-skirt-history-revolution-issue |title=Viva la mini |lang=en |publisher=Vogue |date=2023-04-13 |access-date=2023-11-22}}{{cite journal |last1=Emerson |first1=Gloria |author-link=Gloria Emerson |title=Alas! The Poor Mini |journal=The New York Times |date=1968-02-04 |page=4 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1968/02/04/archives/fashion-alas-the-poor-mini.html?searchResultPosition=17 |quote=The mini was more than a hemline, more than a means of getting attention from men, and more than a new style. It was an unintellectual way, for many women even if they didn't know it, of saying they were tired of the old rules about covering-up, and that now they were going to ignore the age-old attitudes about discretion and sex. The mini was part of a revolution and this was the revolution that pushed the walls of prudery down, once and for all....When women started putting on the mini-skirt,...[c]lothes became no longer a matter of a dress, or a coat. They became a symbol of what was going on in the world, and the little mini led the way.}} The style came into prominence in Australia when Jean Shrimpton wore a short white shift dress, made by Colin Rolfe, on 30 October 1965 at Derby Day, first day of the annual Melbourne Cup Carnival in Australia, where it caused a sensation. According to Shrimpton, who claimed that the brevity of the skirt was due mainly to Rolfe's having insufficient material, the ensuing controversy was as much as anything to do with her having dispensed with a hat and gloves, seen as essential accessories in such a conservative society.Shrimpton, Jean (1990). An Autobiography.Kimball, Duncan (2002-09-12). Jean Shrimpton in Melbourne. Milesago article on Jean Shrimpton also known as jean shrimpTON, modified "Thursday, 12 September 2002 10:48:55". Retrieved from http://www.milesago.com/Features/shrimpton.htm.

At the same time, there was some opposition in the US to miniskirts as bad influences on the young,{{cite book |last1=Hasson |first1=Rochelle |title=The 1967 World Book Year Book: Events of 1966 |publisher=Field Enterprises Educational Corporation |page=338 |chapter=Fashion |quote=The new short-short skirt fashion resulted in mixed emotions everywhere. In the United States, some schools found it necessary to regulate permissible skirt lengths.}} but this waned as people became more accustomed to them.{{cite journal |title=The Mini vs. Midi, Continued |journal=The New York Times |date=1970-03-27 |page=54 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1970/03/27/archives/the-mini-vs-midi-continued.html |access-date=2022-04-04 |quote=In March, 1966, a Sindlinger survey found that 44.9 per cent of the persons interviewed considered the miniskirt 'bad for the morals of the younger generation.' The latest survey [1970] finds that only 35.4 per cent hold that view.}} Some European countries banned mini-skirts from being worn in public, claiming they were an invitation to rapists. In response, Quant retorted that there was clearly no understanding of the tights worn underneath.Adburgham, Alison (1967-10-10). Mary Quant. Interview with Alison Adburgham, The Guardian, 10 October 1967. Retrieved from http://century.guardian.co.uk/1960-1969/Story/0,6051,106475,00.html.

Miniskirts arose at the same time women were beginning to wear trousers more in public,{{cite journal |last1=Taylor |first1=Angela |title=Pants Suits for the City Stir Debate |journal=The New York Times |date=1964-08-20 |page=32 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1964/08/20/archives/pants-suits-forthe-city-stir-debate.html?searchResultPosition=7 |quote=Will women give up skirts for pants in town, as André Courrèges...has been saying for over a year?}}{{cite journal |last1=Peterson |first1=Patricia |title=This is the Look from the French Couture for Fall, '64 |journal=The New York Times |date=1964-08-07 |page=32 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1964/08/07/this-is-the-look-from-the-french-couture-for-fall-64.html?searchResultPosition=10 |quote=Paris has finally approved of the pants suit, first started by André Courrèges in his spring collection....}}{{cite journal |last1=Peterson |first1=Patricia |title=Courreges Stresses Modern Look; Simonetta and Fabiani Play Up Softness |journal=The New York Times |date=1964-02-03 |page=20 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1964/02/03/archives/courreges-stresses-modern-look-simonetta-and-fabiani-play-up.html?searchResultPosition=2 |quote=André Courrèges thinks modern. He firmly believes in pants‐suits for town....[H]e said..., 'Women don't wear pants to the office yet, but they will.'...The [Courrèges] show...started with...pantsuits.}}{{cite magazine |title=See-Through Breakthrough? |magazine=Life |date=1968-10-18 |volume=65 |issue=16 |page=61 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=KlQEAAAAMBAJ&q=see-through+breakthrough&pg=PA14 |quote=[St. Laurent's]...fall pronouncement...that pantsuits belong in the city...has gotten off to a fast start...}} and both were controversial.{{cite journal |last1=Nemy |first1=Enid |title=A Dilemma for Restaurateurs |journal=The New York Times |date=1966-08-03 |page=24 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1966/08/03/archives/a-dilemma-for-restaurateurs-where-do-slacks-end-and-pants-start.html?searchResultPosition=1 |quote=Pants...and the women in them...are being greeted with less than enthusiasm by the men who run many of the city's leading hotels and restaurants.}}{{cite magazine |title=See-Through Breakthrough? |magazine=Life |date=1968-10-18 |volume=65 |issue=16 |page=62 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=KlQEAAAAMBAJ&q=see-through+breakthrough&pg=PA14 |quote=Some restaurants are still in a quandary about whether or not to permit pants...Business is also having to face the issue. Many conservative offices feel that pants are for men only...}} Just as many schools attempted to control skirt hems via dress codes, many public establishments attempted to restrict women's wearing of pants by enforcing their own sartorial rules.{{cite journal |last1=Adburgham |first1=Alison |title=Women's Trousers Get a Dressing Down in London Restaurants |journal=The Guardian |date=1968-09-05 |url=https://www.theguardian.com/theguardian/2011/sep/05/archive-women-trousers-restaurants-1968 |quote=Once more a London restaurant has been in the news for refusing entry to a female in trousers.}} Women sometimes forced establishments to make a choice between miniskirts and pants by trying to enter restaurants in tunic-topped pantsuits and then removing their trousers when restaurant staff objected, leaving the women in ultra-short mini-tunics that restaurants had to accept because their own rules stated that it was okay for women to wear skirts,{{cite journal |last1=Adburgham |first1=Alison |title=Women's Trousers Get a Dressing Down in London Restaurants |journal=The Guardian |date=1968-09-05 |url=https://www.theguardian.com/theguardian/2011/sep/05/archive-women-trousers-restaurants-1968 |quote=...[T]here may be a solution for determined pantswomen in the new tunic suits. The belted tunic makes a dress when the pants are taken off.}} an absurd outcome that eventually helped lead restaurants to relax their dress codes.{{cite journal |last1=Nemy |first1=Enid |title=Restaurateurs Cave In Before the Pants Suit Onslaught |journal=The New York Times |date=1969-04-26 |page=42 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1969/04/25/archives/restaurateurs-cave-in-before-the-pants-suit-onslaught.html?searchResultPosition=1 |quote=...[W]omen strolling around in pants suits...have had the last word....[T]he ban on women who like to lunch and dine in pants is slowly toppling.}}

The response to the miniskirt was particularly harsh in Africa, where many state governments saw them as an un-African garment and part of the corrupting influence of the West.{{cite book |last1=Ross |first1=Robert |title=Clothing: A Global History |date=2008 |publisher=Polity |isbn=9780745631868 |pages=162–163 |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=iwprGRt3XkMC&pg=PA162 |language=en |chapter=Engendered Acceptance and Rejection}} Young city-dwelling African women who wore Western clothing such as the miniskirt were particularly at risk of attack based on their clothing, although Robert Ross notes that gender roles and politics were also a key factor. The urban woman earning her own living and independence was seen as a threat to masculine authority, particularly if she wore clothing seen as un-African. Short skirts were seen as indicating that their wearer was a prostitute, and by conflation, a witch who drained male-dominated society of its vitality and energy. In addition to prostitutes and witches, miniskirts also became associated with secretaries, schoolgirls and undergraduates, and young women with "sugar daddies" as lovers or boyfriends.{{cite book |last1=Ivaska |first1=Andrew M. |editor1-last=Allman |editor1-first=Jean |title=Fashioning Africa: Power and the Politics of Dress |publisher=Indiana University Press |isbn=0253111048 |pages=113–114 |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=_K9Zvt8kkkcC&pg=PA104 |language=en |chapter='Anti-mini Militants Meet Modern Misses': Urban Style, Gender, and the Politics of 'National Culture' in 1960s Dar es Salaam, Tanzania|date=9 September 2004 }} Andrew M. Ivaska has noted that these various tropes boiled down to a basic fear of female power, fear that a woman would use her education or sexual power to control men and/or achieve her own independence, and that the miniskirt therefore became a tangible object of these fears.

File:گروگان (پوستر).jpg, made before the Islamic Revolution of 1979]]

In 1968, the Youth League of Tanzania's ruling TANU party launched Operation Vijana. Organised and run by young men, Vijana was a morality campaign targeting indecent clothing, which led to attacks on women with at least one stoning reportedly triggered by the victim's miniskirt. Gangs of youths patrolled bus stations and streets looking for women dressed "inappropriately", and dealing out physical attacks and beatings. In Ethiopia, an attack on women wearing miniskirts triggered a riot of leftist students in which a hundred cars were set on fire and fifty people injured.

Kamuzu Banda, president of Malawi, described miniskirts as a "diabolic fashion which must disappear from the country once and for all." It is also reported that Kenneth Kaunda, president of Zambia, cited apartheid and the miniskirt as his two primary hates. By the mid-1970s the Zanzibar revolutionary party had forbidden both women and men from wearing a long list of garments, hairstyles and cosmetics, including miniskirts.

In the Soviet Union, miniskirts became widely known after the 1967 Moscow International Fashion Festival, and quickly made their way into popular media, including movies (The Diamond Arm, Afonya, Office Romance;{{cite web |url=https://www.culture.ru/materials/97098/koroche |title=Короче! История мини-юбки в советском кино: "Бриллиантовая рука", "Служебный роман", "Афоня".|author= |website=Culture.ru |language=ru |access-date=2023-11-15 }} an earlier 1956 film Carnival Night also featured dancers wearing short dresses and a conservative Soviet bureaucrat outraged by their "naked legs"{{cite book |author=Ласкин Борис Савельевич |date=1980 |title=Избранное |url=https://litlife.club/books/260644/read?page=3 |trans-title=Selected works |language=ru |location=Moscow |publisher=Советский писатель |page=3}}), cartoons (The Bremen Town Musicians) and sci-fi works (i.e. Definitely Maybe and The Final Circle of Paradise), despite strong criticism from senior citizens and attempts to control skirt lengths in public{{cite web |url=https://www.wday.ru/style/a-byl-li-seks-kak-nosili-mini-yubki-v-sssr/ |title=А был ли секс? Как носили мини-юбки в СССР|author= |website=Wday.ru |language=ru |access-date=2023-11-15 |date=2021-04-21}} (which continued well into the 1980s - for example, hard rock vocalist Elena Sokolova has angered the authorities by wearing an extremely short skirt on stage during her performance at the {{ill|Rock Panorama '86|ru|Рок-панорама-86}} festival{{cite web |url=https://www.guitaristka.ru/index-markiza.shtml |title=МАРКИЗА, Елена Соколова, Елена Молчанова, Светлана Молчанова - хард-рок-группа из 80-х|author= |website=Guitaristka.ru |language=ru |access-date=2023-11-15 }}). One of the best known Soviet designers of miniskirts was Vyacheslav Zaitsev. Short skirts and dresses remain popular in modern day Russia (except for some conservative Muslim regions like Dagestan, where wearing miniskirts is strongly frowned upon and discouraged by travel advisories{{cite web |url=https://www.atorus.ru/node/52949 |title=Как одеваться и вести себя в Дагестане, расскажет памятка для туристов|author= |publisher=Вестник АТОР |language=ru |access-date=2023-11-15 |date=2023-06-17}}).

From 1969 onwards, the fashion industry largely returned to longer skirts such as the midi and the maxi,{{cite book |last1=Howell |first1=Georgina |title=In Vogue: Sixty Years of Celebrities and Fashion from British Vogue |date=1978 |publisher=Penguin Books Ltd. |location=Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England |isbn=0-14-00-4955-X |page=319 |chapter=1970 |quote=In the summer Vogue announces, 'The long skirt is here – and the first Vogue with not a short skirt in sight'.}}{{cite journal |last1=Emerson |first1=Gloria |title=From Ungaro, Soft Angles and Curves |journal=The New York Times |date=1970-01-29 |page=40 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1970/01/29/archives/from-ungaro-soft-angles-and-curves.html |access-date=2023-05-30 |quote=...[L]onger skirts...are here. While the big pacifier in Paris is that a woman can choose from many different lengths, the truth is that all skirts are inches longer.}} with even Mary Quant showing no above-the-knee skirts for 1970.{{cite journal |title=Even for Its Inventor, Miniskirt is Dead |journal=The New York Times |date=1970-04-23 |page=58 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1970/04/23/archives/even-for-its-inventor-miniskirt-is-dead.html |access-date=2022-05-23 |quote=Mary Quant...showed a collection of midis and maxis — and not a single mini...}} Journalist Christopher Booker gave two reasons for this reaction: firstly, that "there was almost nowhere else to go ... the mini-skirts could go no higher"; and secondly, in his view, "dressed up in mini-skirts and shiny PVC macs, given such impersonal names as 'dolly birds', girls had been transformed into throwaway plastic objects".Christopher Booker (1980) The Seventies This lengthening of hemlines coincided with the growth of the feminist movement. However, in the 1960s the mini had been regarded as a symbol of liberation, and it was worn by some, such as Germaine Greer and, in the following decade, Gloria Steinem.{{cite news| url=http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/1995/09/24/RV65259.DTL | work=The San Francisco Chronicle | title=Making Ms.Story / The biography of Gloria Steinem, a woman of controversy and contradictions | first=Patricia | last=Holt | date=22 September 1995}} Greer herself wrote in 1969 that:

{{blockquote|The women kept on dancing while their long skirts crept up, and their girdles dissolved, and their nipples burst through like hyacinth tips and their clothes withered away to the mere wisps and ghosts of draperies to adorn and glorify ...Greer, Germaine (1969-02). Germaine Greer in Oz, February 1969.}}

In the earliest seventies, particularly in the US, minis and microminis briefly rebounded in popularity{{cite journal |last1=Curtis |first1=Charlotte |author-link=Charlotte Curtis |title=The Midi Laid an Egg in 1970, but It Did Hatch Other Fashions |journal=The New York Times |date=1971-01-01 |page=33 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1971/01/01/archives/the-midi-laid-an-egg-in-1970-but-it-did-hatch-other-fashions.html |access-date=2022-04-04 |quote=...[V]irtually anybody can see...a vast number of bare knees...on any street.}} after women's rejection of designers' attempt to impose midiskirts as the sole length in 1970, referred to as "the midi debacle."{{cite journal |last1=Klemesrud |first1=Judy |title=Women's Revolt? Harris Poll Detects 'Real Storm Signals' |journal=The New York Times |date=1971-01-19 |page=32 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1971/01/19/archives/womens-revolt-harris-poll-detects-real-storm-signals.html?auth=login-google1tap&login=google1tap&searchResultPosition=1 |access-date=2024-08-24 |quote=...[A] survey, conducted...by Louis Harris and Associates, studied the views of some 3,000 women and 1,000 men throughout the country....[Respondents] reject the midiskirt length by a thumping 65 to 32 percent, and endorse the old‐fashioned mini by 59 to 39 percent....[T]hree in four women feel that they are being manipulated on fashions, and that they don't like it.}}{{cite journal |last1=Klemesrud |first1=Judy |title=...Or You Belong to One of the Protest Groups |journal=The New York Times |date=1970-09-25 |page=57 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1970/09/25/archives/or-you-belong-to-one-of-the-protest-groups.html |access-date=2022-06-22 |quote=...[A]nti‐midi groups...have proliferated since the midiskirt emerged last spring as a serious threat to women who like their skirts short — or at least want a choice of lengths when they walk into a store to buy a dress.}}{{cite journal |last1=Morris |first1=Bernadine |title=Madame Butterfly Look Flutters Through Rome Fashion Shows |journal=The New York Times |date=1970-07-13 |page=34 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1970/07/13/archives/madame-butterfly-look-flutters-through-rome-fashion-shows.html |access-date=2023-05-17 |quote=...American tourists [in Europe] are apparently the last holdouts [in wearing miniskirts]. They scurry around in their minidresses...Even the [US] fashion contingent is reluctant to take to midiskirts.}} Women both continued to wear miniskirts and switched even more to trousers,{{cite journal |last1=Morris |first1=Bernadine |title=The Midi Begins to Sell, but Will It Become a Fashion or Fad? |journal=The New York Times |date=1970-03-06 |page=46 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1970/03/06/archives/the-midi-begins-to-sell-but-will-it-become-a-fashion-or-fad.html |access-date=2022-04-04 |quote=...Mrs. Eddy of Saks Fifth Avenue and Mrs. Jane Stark, vice-president of Lord & Taylor, report that, in their suburban stores, women who were leery about pants for everyday wear are now overcoming their inhibitions....'We're selling an awful lot of pants,' says Liz Claiborne...}}{{cite journal |last1=Curtis |first1=Charlotte |title=The Midi Laid an Egg in 1970, but It Did Hatch Other Fashions |journal=The New York Times |date=1971-01-01 |page=33 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1971/01/01/archives/the-midi-laid-an-egg-in-1970-but-it-did-hatch-other-fashions.html |access-date=2022-04-04 |quote=...[S]uddenly there were knickers, gauchos, and pants, pants, pants.}} and designers, having been made to understand that they would no longer be respected as arbiters,{{cite journal |last1=Donovan |first1=Carrie |title=Feminism's Effect on Fashion |journal=The New York Times |date=1977-08-28 |page=225 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1977/08/28/archives/feminisms-effect-on-fashion.html |access-date=2021-12-10 |quote='When we were told to give up our miniskirts for midis,' [Gloria Steinem] says, 'there was a semi‐conscious boycott on the part of American women. We were fed up with being manipulated. We now wanted to make our own decisions on hundreds of things, not have them handed down from on high'.}}{{cite magazine |title=The Minneapolis Look |magazine=Time |date=1971-08-16 |volume=98 |issue=7 |url=https://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,877218,00.html |access-date=2022-04-04 |quote=[Bill] Blass...says that 'we learned last year the best we can do is make suggestions'.}} followed suit for a couple of years and included minis again,{{cite journal |last1=Morris |first1=Bernadine |title=Zigzag Hemlines are Shown |journal=The New York Times |date=1971-02-08 |page=28 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1971/02/08/archives/zigzag-hemlines-are-shown.html?searchResultPosition=39 |access-date=2024-05-30 |quote=The French couturiers have recognized the right of contemporary women to show their knees....Minis abound for the women who still want them, though the majority of hemlines hover about the knees. Though the Paris designers foisted long skirts upon the world a year ago [1970], they've had the gallantry to retreat.}}{{cite journal |last1=Morris |first1=Bernadine |title=Saint Laurent's American Sportswear |journal=The New York Times |date=1970-03-10 |page=46 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1970/03/10/archives/saint-laurents-american-sportswear.html?searchResultPosition=7 |quote= 'Yves [Saint Laurent] hasn't abandoned short skirts,' [Mary Russell] added, pointing to a micro‐mini in suede that's supposed to rest on the hips and is fringed up to the point of decency.}}{{cite journal |last1=Crenshaw |first1=Mary Ann |title=About as Mini as It Can Be |journal=The New York Times |date=1971-12-28 |page=34 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1971/12/28/archives/about-as-mini-as-it-can-be.html |access-date=2023-05-17 |quote=Karl Lagerfeld, in his spring collection for Chloe, has produced...maximum micro‐dresses...Sonia Rykiel's dresses for spring and summer are midthigh length.}}{{cite journal |last1=Schiro |first1=Anne-Marie |title=For Grown-Up Women, It's the Little Girl Look |journal=The New York Times |date=1971-11-22 |page=46 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1971/11/22/archives/for-grownup-women-its-the-littlegirl-look.html?searchResultPosition=8 |quote=...Jean Cacharel's...models wore...minidresses with tucks, pleats, puff sleeves and belts tied in a big bow in back....He also has classic gabardine skirts with hems several inches above the knee....Emmanuelle Khanh also has a version of the baby dress. Hers is in hot pink with full short sleeves and a high drawstring waist that ties in back.}} often underneath midis and maxis.{{cite magazine |title=The Midi's Compensations |magazine=Time |date=1970-06-08 |volume=95 |issue=23 |quote=Valentino was first with the layered look (either a shorter skirt worn underneath a midi coat, or the skirt itself divided into tiers of different lengths)...[Jacques] Tiffeau has wrapped a deeply slashed camel-colored midi over a maroon mini skirt...Bill Blass settles for the double hemline for daywear...}}{{cite journal |last1=Morris |first1=Bernadine |title=For Daring, There's Givenchy |journal=The New York Times |date=1971-07-30 |page=14 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1971/07/30/archives/for-daring-theres-givenchy-for-classics-theres-courreges.html |access-date=2022-03-18 |quote=...Givenchy's micromini dresses...show a lot of leg, though they are concealed by such things as a purple leather coat to the floor.}}{{cite journal |last1=Morris |first1=Bernadine |title=They Came, They Saw, They Loved and Bought Valentino's Midi |journal=The New York Times |date=1970-03-12 |page=66 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1970/03/12/archives/they-came-they-saw-they-loved-and-bought-valentinos-midi.html |access-date=2022-06-22 |quote=...[L]ong coats or skirts that open up in front to show shorter ones underneath...let you move a little better.}}{{cite journal |last1=Emerson |first1=Gloria |title=The Long and the Short of It are Shown in Valentino's Hems |journal=The New York Times |date=1970-01-19 |page=32 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1970/01/19/archives/the-long-and-the-short-of-it-are-shown-in-valentinos-hems.html |access-date=2022-06-22 |quote=Valentino really likes the look of midi skirts slashed open in front to show a much shorter skirt underneath it. The same effect is seen when he does wrap skirts with deep slits at the side.}} Unlike in the 1960s, minis during this period might be worn with chunky platform shoes, often with high wedge heels.{{cite book |last1=Sweetinburgh |first1=Thelma |title=1973 Britannica Book of the Year: Events of 1972 |publisher=Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc. |isbn=0852292821 |page=295 |chapter=Fashion and Dress |date=1973 |quote=...[H]emlines surged upward to mid-thigh and above, reestablishing the mini-dress...The little girl dress also reappeared, with short puff sleeves and sash or bow belts....Soles became thicker and thicker, first in wedge and then in platform shape, while heels rose to 4...inches or more, but remained heavy.}}{{cite journal |last1=Ginger |first1=Henry |title=Yves Saint Laurent Brings on the Mini |journal=The New York Times |date=1970-12-07 |page=58 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1970/12/07/archives/yves-saint-laurent-brings-on-the-mini.html?searchResultPosition=30 |access-date=2024-08-31 |quote=...Yves Saint Laurent...includes pleated mini shorts that are so brief...they would be worn only by the young...The pleats in the shorts make them look like skirts....They were shown with high-heeled wedge-soled shoes that had open toes and ankle straps...}} In 1971, almost all designers, even upper-echelon couture designers,{{cite journal |last1=Morris |first1=Bernadine |title=For Daring, There's Givenchy |journal=The New York Times |date=1971-07-30 |page=14 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1971/07/30/archives/for-daring-theres-givenchy-for-classics-theres-courreges.html |access-date=2022-03-18 |quote=...Givenchy shows hot pants.}}{{cite journal |last1=Morris |first1=Bernadine |title=Givenchy: Elegance and More |journal=The New York Times |date=1971-01-28 |page=41 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1971/01/28/archives/givenchy-elegance-and-more.html |access-date=2022-03-18 |quote=Givenchy tucks shorts under his skinny daytime suits and dresses and sometimes sends the shorts out alone unabashed.}}{{cite journal |last1=Morris |first1=Bernadine |title=Valentino Revivifies Fashions of 40s |journal=The New York Times |date=1971-01-22 |page=45 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1971/01/22/archives/valentino-revivifies-fashions-of-40s.html |access-date=2022-06-22 |quote=The red coat covered navy shorts, the navy coat red ones....Valentino made the idea of shorts‐under‐skirts look new...}} showed hot pants,{{cite journal |last1=Morris |first1=Bernadine |title=It Gets Wearing |journal=The New York Times |date=1979-12-30 |page=DX12 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1979/12/30/archives/it-gets-wearing.html |access-date=2022-04-04 |quote=During the winter of 1970, women wore shorts — 'hot pants,' protesting a hemline drop from mid‐thigh to midcalf.}} also presented in combination with midiskirts, maxiskirts, and minis.{{cite journal |last1=Morris |first1=Bernadine |title=It's More Dazzle for the New Valentino |journal=The New York Times |date=1970-12-08 |page=56 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1970/12/08/archives/its-more-dazzle-for-the-new-valentino.html |access-date=2022-06-22 |quote=Some of the shorts...go under dresses—and some are accompanied by long coats.}}{{cite journal |title=The Ultimate Minis |journal=The New York Times |date=1971-01-30 |page=16 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1971/01/30/archives/the-ultimate-minis.html?searchResultPosition=6 |quote=...Kenzo...specializes in the shortest minidresses in town – they're no longer than shirts – and the matching shorts that accompany them are an absolute necessity.}} They continued to express a desire for women to wear longer skirts, though, and soon those women who had not switched entirely to jeans and trousers were often wearing their skirts at the knee.{{cite magazine |title=The Minneapolis Look |magazine=Time |date=1971-08-16 |volume=98 |issue=7 |url=https://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,877218,00.html |access-date=2022-04-04 |quote=After the mini-midi debacle of last year, hemlines will generally hover cautiously around the knee.}}{{cite journal |last1=Curtis |first1=Charlotte |title=The Midi Laid an Egg in 1970, but It Did Hatch Other Fashions |journal=The New York Times |date=1971-01-01 |page=33 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1971/01/01/archives/the-midi-laid-an-egg-in-1970-but-it-did-hatch-other-fashions.html |access-date=2022-04-04 |quote=Bergdorf's customers demanded and got skirts covering their knees. They didn't want them down around their calves.}} In 1973, Kenzo made calf-length skirts look new by cutting them fuller and in lighter fabrics for a style that was very different from the midi{{cite book |last1=Mulvagh |first1=Jane |title=Vogue History of 20th Century Fashion |date=1988 |publisher=Viking, the Penguin Group |location=London, England |isbn=0-670-80172-0 |page=337 |chapter=1974 |quote=Kenzo anticipated a major change this winter by creating a full, circular skirt, easily caught by the wind...The replacement of the short, kicky skirt by the longer, fuller style was the most important change in the silhouette...[T]he hemline was anywhere from 3 inches below the knee to the ankle.}} and women soon accepted this, making it one of the characteristic styles of the mid-seventies, one that would last into the early eighties, sometimes dropping to the ankle.

Although miniskirts had mostly disappeared from mainstream fashion by the mid-'70s,{{cite journal |last1=Morris |first1=Bernadine |title=Couture Scorecard: Good is Quite Good |journal=The New York Times |date=1973-07-28 |page=28 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1973/07/28/archives/couture-scorecard-good-is-quite-good-special-cachet.html?searchResultPosition=13 |access-date=2024-08-26 |quote=Hemlines that just cover the knees are...universal. What they prove is, for sure, the miniskirt is dead.}}{{cite journal |last1=Morris |first1=Bernadine |title=Why Nobody's Paying Much Attention to Spring Couture |journal=The New York Times |date=1974-02-04 |page=24 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1974/02/04/archives/why-nobodys-paying-much-attention-to-spring-couture-special-to-the.html |access-date=2022-06-22 |quote=Courrèges was the only designer to show short ones and they seemed like period pieces.}}{{cite journal |last1=Morris |first1=Bernadine |title=Women are Stealing a March on Short Skirts |journal=The New York Times |date=1987-04-25 |page=1 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1987/04/25/style/women-are-stealing-a-march-on-short-skirts.html |access-date=2022-04-04 |quote=...[S]kirt hemlines quietly began their descent until mid-calf length became commonplace in the 1970s...}}{{cite journal |last1=Morris |first1=Bernadine |title=Clothes for Fall: Mostly Casual |journal=The New York Times |date=1974-04-21 |page=54 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1974/04/21/archives/clothes-for-fall-mostly-casual-fashion-talk.html |access-date=2022-06-22 |quote=Gayle Kirkpatrick offers a choice of hemlines:...below the knee or midcalf....[T]he shorter skirts look safe, the long ones more fashionable.}} prompting the leading designer of the time, Yves Saint Laurent, to say, "I don't think short skirts will ever come back,"{{cite news |last1=Dorsey |first1=Hebe |title=From Paris, Skirting the Issue with Ruffles and Flourishes |newspaper=The Washington Post |date=1977-01-27 |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/1977/01/27/from-paris-skirting-the-issue-with-ruffles-and-flourishes/662f316a-5dfe-4038-afcd-b043650ba962/ |access-date=2022-04-04 |quote=...[Saint Laurent] added, 'I don't think short skirts will ever come back'.}} they never entirely went away, with women having to be pressured by the fashion industry to abandon above-the-knee skirts as late as 1974,{{cite journal |last1=Morris |first1=Bernadine |title=On 7th Avenue Halston Dares to Bare the Knee |journal=The New York Times |date=1974-11-11 |page=24 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1974/11/11/archives/on-7th-avenue-halston-dares-to-bare-the-knee-confusing-customers.html |access-date=2022-04-04 |quote=...[T]he miniskirt is...still prevalent...today too, according to store executives from all over the country...'I'm having a hard time getting my secretary out of short dresses as it is,' said the fashion director of a large store in the Southwest.}}{{cite journal |last1=Klemesrud |first1=Judy |title=Mini Still Reigns, But Are Its Days Numbered? |journal=The New York Times |date=1974-06-25 |page=33 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1974/06/25/archives/mini-still-reigns-but-are-its-days-numbered.html |access-date=2022-04-04 |quote=It is supposed to be so out of style, so passé. Everybody who is anybody supposedly wears her skirts below the knees and longer...Take a walk any day...between 44th and 57th Streets. You will see so many miniskirts that you will wonder if all those 'savvy' fashion experts have been holed up in some cave in Samoa....The majority of women are in pants, of course. But most of the skirts on the younger women are minis — not those extreme microminis that barely covered the panty line circa 1969 but the old familiar minis about four or five inches above the knees.}} miniskirt stalwart André Courrèges continuing to show them,{{cite journal |last1=Morris |first1=Bernadine |title=Courageous Courreges: He Refuses to Flee to the 30s |journal=The New York Times |date=1974-02-01 |page=18 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1974/02/01/archives/courageous-courreges-he-refuses-to-flee-to-the-30s-tailored-chiffon.html?searchResultPosition=1 |quote=Courrèges had the only knee-baring skirts in Paris. White dress...is same length he showed in '63.}} and even some mainstream designers like Halston,{{cite journal |last1=Morris |first1=Bernadine |title=On 7th Avenue Halston Dares to Bare the Knee |journal=The New York Times |date=1974-11-11 |page=24 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1974/11/11/archives/on-7th-avenue-halston-dares-to-bare-the-knee-confusing-customers.html |access-date=2022-04-04 |quote=Halston was...promulgating a knee‐baring fashion he called 'the skimp.'...[I]t bears an ineluctable resemblance to the miniskirt of yore....The endorsement of knee-baring skirts by a designer of Halston's stature could only confuse customers who were gradually being convinced they should hide their knees, most retailers agreed.}}{{cite journal |last1=Morris |first1=Bernadine |title=From Halston, a Reprise of the Tunic |journal=The New York Times |date=1977-06-17 |page=A24 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1977/06/17/archives/from-halston-a-reprise-of-the-tunic.html |access-date=2022-04-04 |quote=[Halston's] mannequins almost always wore heavy knitted tights with short tunic tops....Back in 1974 when Halston had another go at reviving short skirts, he called them 'the skimp' and likened them to Florentine tunics.}} Kenzo,{{cite journal |last1=Dorsey |first1=Hebe |title=Fashion |journal=The New York Times |date=1976-11-14 |page=239 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1976/11/14/archives/fashion-kenzo-grows-up.html |access-date=2022-04-04 |quote=The hottest news from the Paris spring prêt‐à‐porter collections is the mini. And the man who put it back in the spotlight is Kenzo....There were short skirts with balloon tops, caught under a low belt; some skirts then swirled out, but others, neat and tapered, were just little wraparounds.}}{{cite journal |last1=Morris |first1=Bernadine |title=A Rousing Show by Saint Laurent |journal=The New York Times |date=1976-10-27 |page=65 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1976/10/27/archives/a-rousing-show-by-saint-laurent-and-valentino-too.html |access-date=2022-06-22 |quote=...Kenzo showed virtually everything short....[A] number of the dresses were hiked up and bloused over a hip belt to [become] micro. Some of them were really below the knees....[S]hapes are usually very big and loose, gathered at the shoulders....[T]he micro‐minis...are in Polynesian prints...}} and Karl Lagerfeld{{cite journal |last1=Morris |first1=Bernadine |title=At Lagerfeld's Paris Show, the 18th Century Goes Modern |journal=The New York Times |date=1977-03-29 |page=41 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1977/03/29/archives/at-lagerfelds-paris-show-the-18th-century-goes-modern.html |access-date=2022-04-04 |quote=Lagerfeld...made the question of skirt length irrelevant. He showed them all, from very short to very long....What is very apparent about the dresses is their fullness....They're smocklike affairs...If they're short, you can see the boot tops. The boots come up over the knee...}} offering a few mini-tunics and mini-blousons among the standard calf-length dirndl skirts of the mid-seventies Big Look period.{{cite journal |last1=Morris |first1=Bernadine |title=Mini Skirts Make Maximum Impact in Paris |journal=The New York Times |date=1977-04-06 |page=66 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1977/04/06/archives/mini-skirts-make-maxi-impact-in-paris.html |access-date=2022-04-04 |quote=The short skirt story is gaining momentum in fashion here. It began a year ago on the runways of such designers of ready‐to‐wear clothes as Kenzo and lesser lights, including Ter & Bantine. Bulky sweaters that cupped the buttocks and brief, knitted dresses were shown over knitted tights...}}{{cite journal |editor1-last=Finley |editor1-first=Ruth |title=Paris Pret-a-Porter: 'Free Choice' |journal=Fashion International |date=1976-12-01 |volume=V |issue=3 |page=1 |publisher=FI Publications, Inc. |location=New York, NY, USA |quote=...[T]he '77 mini is newly proportioned with hip focus via belting, banding, wrapping or elasticizing – and ranges from giant billowing batwing blousons (Kenzo) to 20s flappers (Dorothy Bis).}}{{cite journal |last1=Morris |first1=Bernadine |title=Paris Report |journal=The New York Times |date=1976-11-28 |page=237 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1976/11/28/archives/fashion-paris-report-sunstruck-styles.html |access-date=2022-03-10 |quote=[The mini']s most dramatic form is the voluminous smock that Kenzo devised, always belted at the hips. But other designers showed shirts as dresses...}}{{cite news |last1=Hyde |first1=Nina S. |author-link=Nina Hyde |title=Fashion Notes |newspaper=The Washington Post |date=1977-10-09 |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/1977/10/09/fashion-notes/20b4e610-5338-4348-9385-ee6319a2eaba/ |access-date=2022-03-24 |quote=...[S]ome will top their leg covers with mini tunics or big bubble sweaters, and that's all.}} In these occasional high-fashion versions of the mid-seventies,{{cite journal |last1=Morris |first1=Bernadine |title=Miniskirts – Surprise, Surprise |journal=The New York Times |date=1976-12-01 |page=66 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1976/12/01/archives/miniskirts-surprise-surprise.html?searchResultPosition=3 |access-date=2024-04-06 |quote=Today's minis are bigger and blousier than the ones around the last time...}} mini was taken to mean any length above the knee.{{cite journal |last1=Morris |first1=Bernadine |title=Mini Skirts Make Maximum Impact in Paris |journal=The New York Times |date=1977-04-06 |page=66 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1977/04/06/archives/mini-skirts-make-maxi-impact-in-paris.html |access-date=2022-04-04 |quote=Most designers were careful to present clothes in at least three different lengths: above the knee, or mini; calf length, or standard, and somewhere around the lower part of the calf or the top of the ankles...}} Enough above-the-knee skirts were shown in Paris in 1976 for fashion writers to suggest a possible mini revival,{{cite book |last1=Sweetinburgh |first1=Thelma |title=1977 Britannica Book of the Year: Events of 1976 |publisher=Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc. |isbn=0-85229-325-9 |page=340 |chapter=Fashion and Dress |date=9 March 1977 |quote=In the fall,...some Paris houses...set off shock waves by reintroducing the mini...}}{{cite journal |last1=Morris |first1=Bernadine |title=Cardin Joins Miniskirt Parade |journal=The New York Times |date=1976-10-29 |page=46 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1976/10/29/archives/cardin-joins-miniskirt-parade.html?searchResultPosition=8 |quote=The clothes...are of the mini variety...crisp tutu-like skirts...When they aren't flaring out all around the body, the skirts tend to dip in handkerchief points...Often, it's tied up on one shoulder like a tiny toga. Ponchos with a hole for the head are another version....They're in such fabrics as eyelet, warp-printed cotton or chintz.}} but these were never broadly taken up by the general public,{{cite journal |last1=Morris |first1=Bernadine |title=Miniskirts – Surprise, Surprise |journal=The New York Times |date=1976-12-01 |page=66 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1976/12/01/archives/miniskirts-surprise-surprise.html?searchResultPosition=3 |access-date=2024-04-06 |quote=Kenzo's miniskirts are turning up in New York, but even the women who wear them don't think they're going to take over the fashion scene....Dawn Willis...doesn't think minis will take over because 'American women are too into pants'.}}{{cite journal |last1=Morris |first1=Bernadine |title=Fashion Puts Legs Out in Open Again |journal=The New York Times |date=1977-01-19 |page=53 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1977/01/19/archives/fashion-puts-legs-out-in-open-again.html?searchResultPosition=2 |quote='My eye isn't attuned to them,' said Kasper, another designer who has bypassed the mini. 'It's too close to what we've had — there haven't been enough years in between. As I look back on pictures of people wearing miniskirts, and I loved the miniskirt when it was in, they look so dated and funny.'}}{{cite journal |last1=Morris |first1=Bernadine |title=Message is Clear, but How Will It Be Received? |journal=The New York Times |date=1978-04-16 |page=70 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1978/04/16/archives/message-is-clear-but-how-will-it-be-received-skirting-the-mini.html |access-date=2022-04-04 |quote=Two years ago [1976] Paris designers made a concerted effort to bring back knee‐baring clothes and it went practically unnoticed.}} which was still gravitating toward below-the-knee dirndls.

Around 1976,{{cite book |last1=Mulvagh |first1=Jane |title=Vogue History of 20th Century Fashion |date=1988 |publisher=Viking, the Penguin Group |location=London, England |isbn=0-670-80172-0 |page=343 |chapter=1976-1986 |quote=The heyday of punk was 1976-8.}} punks began including among their array of clothes intended to shock very short miniskirts in materials like black leather, rubber, PVC,{{cite news |last1=Hyde |first1=Nina |author-link=Nina Hyde |title=The Mini Revival: Options for a New Age |newspaper=The Washington Post |date=1981-04-21 |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/1981/04/21/the-mini-revival-options-for-a-new-age/71e1253d-e898-4f6c-ad30-dbfd2cf63842/ |access-date=2022-04-04 |quote=In London the black plastic mini has been part of the punk uniform...for the past four years [1977-1981].}} tartan, and even trash bag plastic,{{cite news |last1=Hyde |first1=Nina S. |author-link=Nina Hyde |title=Punks Without a Cause |newspaper=The Washington Post |date=1977-04-26 |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/1977/04/26/punks-without-a-cause/101de2f7-595c-4641-b250-9daa8960b555/ |access-date=2022-04-04 |quote=They wear...ripped garbage can liners, fishnet hose and stiletto heels.}}{{cite book |last1=Mulvagh |first1=Jane |title=Vogue History of 20th Century Fashion |date=1988 |publisher=Viking, the Penguin Group |location=London, England |isbn=0-670-80172-0 |page=344 |chapter=1976-1986 |quote=Punks...walked down the King's Road in mini tartan kilts,...torn PVC, leather and dustbin-liners....They wore plastic, rubber or leather clothes.}} the unfashionable length shocking almost as much as the aggressive materials. Punks of this period also introduced the wearing of miniskirts with then-very-out-of-style high-heeled, late-1950s pumps, which they got at thrift shops, a combination not worn in the 1960s and unthinkable during the 1950s.{{cite book |last1=Menkes |first1=Suzy |title=1986 Britannica Book of the Year: Events of 1985 |publisher=Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc. |isbn=0-85229-437-9 |page=251 |chapter=Fashion and Dress: The Street Scene – Pop, Glam, Androgyny |date=9 March 1986 |quote=The sexist woman – tight black leather skirt and spiky high heels – had been a part of punk.}} Though not at all mainstream, these punk looks would influence bands that came after them into wearing more sixties-looking miniskirts again, as evidenced by Deborah Harry of the group Blondie, Kate Pierson and Cindy Wilson of The B-52's, Fay Fife of The Revillos, Rhoda Dakar of The Bodysnatchers, Siouxsie Sioux of Siouxsie and the Banshees, and the group The Slits, who often wore miniskirts during the "new wave" era of the late '70s. Some of these performers were part of a few sixties-revival subcultures that came in the wake of punk and included Mod revival and ska revival, both of whose female adherents sought out authentic-looking early miniskirts as part of their sixties-revival look.{{cite news |last1=Hyde |first1=Nina |title=A Bath House Turned Disco |newspaper=The Washington Post |date=1979-12-08 |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/1979/12/09/a-bath-house-turned-disco/d9e54d0c-b344-435b-8e65-ebcd332c6c02/ |access-date=2024-02-09 |quote=...[T]he nouvelle vague [New Wave] crowd dressed a la...1960s...One girl...wears a Courreges mini with short, white Courreges boots.}}{{cite journal |last1=Owen |first1=Morfudd |title=Going Underground: Mod Revival Fanzines – In Pictures |journal=The Guardian |date=2019-01-26 |url=https://www.theguardian.com/music/gallery/2019/jan/26/going-underground-mod-revival-fanzines-in-pictures-modzines |access-date=2024-07-14}} Blondie's Deborah Harry had her sixties-ish look provided by fashion designer Stephen Sprouse,{{cite journal |last1=Morrisroe |first1=Patricia |title=House of Sprouse: The Punk Glamour God |journal=New York |date=2004-04-05 |url=https://nymag.com/nymetro/arts/features/n_10106/ |access-date=2022-08-18 |quote=Sprouse...transformed Harry..., creating clothes from ripped tights, T-shirts, and objects he picked up off the streets....In 1978, he photo-printed a picture he'd taken of TV scan lines onto a piece of fabric, which he then designed as a dress for Debbie Harry. She wore it in the video for her No. 1 hit 'Heart of Glass'...}} who had been responsible for Halston's "skimp" minis of 1974{{cite journal |last1=Morrisroe |first1=Patricia |title=House of Sprouse: The Punk Glamour God |journal=New York |date=2004-04-05 |url=https://nymag.com/nymetro/arts/features/n_10106/ |access-date=2022-08-18 |quote=...Stephen Sprouse was working for Halston in the early seventies...Sprouse loved Carnaby Street and miniskirts. He wanted to see women's legs again, and pestered Halston constantly about it....[I]n 1974, Halston let Sprouse have his way....[T]hey created what became known as the Skimp.}} and would become internationally known for his own sixties-revival line during the eighties. The song "(I Don't Want to Go to) Chelsea" (1978), by new wave artist Elvis Costello, contains the line in the chorus: "There's no place here for the mini-skirt waddle."{{cite web |url=https://genius.com/Elvis-costello-chelsea-lyrics |title=Elvis Costello – Chelsea |website=genius.com |access-date=October 21, 2021}}

During the seventies, when males and females typically wore identical denim cutoff shorts instead of miniskirts if they wanted short lengths, the female cast members of the US TV show Hee Haw, known as the "Hee Haw Honeys", always wore country-style minidresses even during the miniskirt's fashion hiatus in the late '70s and early '80s; and as mentioned above, female tennis players, figure skaters, cheerleaders, and dancers also wore short skirts.

Toward the end of the seventies, in 1978 and '79, some of the above-the-knee skirt looks that would become associated with the eighties began to be introduced,{{cite journal |last1=Morris |first1=Bernadine |title=The Message is Clear, but How Will It Be Received |journal=The New York Times |date=1978-04-16 |page=70 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1978/04/16/archives/message-is-clear-but-how-will-it-be-received-skirting-the-mini.html |access-date=2022-04-04 |quote=It may be that there is a latent desire for miniskirts and padded shoulders....The way most store people see [miniskirts]...is under a tie‐on longer skirt that can be removed for dancing.}}{{cite news |last1=Hyde |first1=Nina S. |author-link=Nina Hyde |title=Skirting the Mini |newspaper=The Washington Post |date=1979-10-16 |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/1979/10/16/skirting-the-mini/116559c2-8d45-46fa-a5b5-6ed9c0008f36/ |access-date=2022-04-04 |quote=In the past week of showings of ready-to-wear for next spring, [fashion buyers] had seen lots of short, short skirts....Karl Lagerfeld, who designs for Chloe, showed the shortest miniskirts....[H]is minis with padded shoulders...are a breed apart....His minis...were served up in three categories: a single layer that barely covered the fanny, and double-tiered and triple-tiered skirts that still stopped above the knee.}}{{cite journal |last1=Morris |first1=Bernadine |title=At Paris Showings, Both Creativity and Confusion |journal=The New York Times |date=1979-10-19 |page=A20 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1979/10/19/archives/at-paris-showings-both-creativity-and-confusion.html |access-date=2022-04-04 |quote=Along with Claude Montana, [Thierry Mugler] is the favorite of the avant‐garde. Both were leaders of the outer‐space brigade and the return to the 1960s miniskirted look. They were not alone....Lagerfeld favored an abbreviated skirt that was little more than a ruffle around the hips, and a brief one at that.}} including the flounced, hip-yoked style debuted by Norma Kamali and Perry Ellis in 1979 and called rah-rah skirts in the UK{{cite book |last1=Mulvagh |first1=Jane |title=Vogue History of 20th Century Fashion |date=1988 |publisher=Viking, the Penguin Group |location=London, England |isbn=0-670-80172-0 |page=367 |chapter=1979 |quote=Norma Kamali...and Perry Ellis introduced the short rah-rah skirt, worn with short-sleeved jumpers, knee-high socks and pedal pushers.}}{{cite book |last1=Mulvagh |first1=Jane |title=Vogue History of 20th Century Fashion |date=1988 |publisher=Viking, the Penguin Group |location=London, England |isbn=0-670-80172-0 |page=371 |chapter=1980 |quote=Kenzo, Chloé and others now showed pretty, floral printed-cotton versions of the rah-rah introduced by Kamali and Ellis in 1979.}} and above-the-knee versions of the tight sheath skirt, with even Yves Saint Laurent showing some above-the-knee lengths.{{cite journal |last1=Morris |first1=Bernadine |title=The Message is Clear, but How Will It Be Received? |journal=The New York Times |date=1978-04-16 |page=70 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1978/04/16/archives/message-is-clear-but-how-will-it-be-received-skirting-the-mini.html |access-date=2022-04-04 |quote=...[T]his time the chief proponent [of knee-baring skirts] — an occasional version is offered by other houses — is Yves Saint Laurent.}}{{cite journal |last1=Morris |first1=Bernadine |title=Saint Laurent: The Clothes are the Message |journal=The New York Times |date=1978-04-12 |page=C14 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1978/04/12/archives/saint-laurent-the-clothes-are-the-message.html |access-date=2021-12-01 |quote=...[A] short red two‐tiered minidress ...[and a] few other above-the-knee chemiselike styles appeared,...slip-like affairs...}} The sixties-revival subcultures emanating from the UK seemed to reach the high fashion world somewhat in 1979,{{cite book |last1=Mulvagh |first1=Jane |title=Vogue History of 20th Century Fashion |date=1988 |publisher=Viking, the Penguin Group |location=London, England |isbn=0-670-80172-0 |page=373 |chapter=1980 |quote=Op art returned to London's streets, coinciding with a musical revival led by [ska revival bands] The Specials and Madness...}} as a few Paris catwalks presented styles seemingly pulled right out of the sixties, including miniskirts inspired by Courrèges, Rabanne, and Gernreich.{{cite journal |last1=Morris |first1=Bernadine |title=French Ready-to-Wear: The Ever-Changing Message |journal=The New York Times |date=1979-04-13 |page=A12 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1979/04/13/archives/french-readytowear-the-everchanging-message.html |access-date=2023-05-17 |quote=Ready‐to-wear designers...are busily repeating such successes of the 1960s as the knitted shift and the miniskirt.}}{{cite news |last1=Hyde |first1=Nina S. |author-link=Nina Hyde |title=Knee Highs |newspaper=The Washington Post |date=1979-10-13 |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/1979/10/13/knee-highs/96515dea-e3f2-4bb7-94be-96654ae38669/ |access-date=2022-04-04 |quote=Some Paris designers have taken...a backward glance at the 1960s. What they have come up with for the opening ready-to-wear showings of 1980s hot-weather fashions are skinny miniskirts and other styles spun off from the 1960s fashions of Courreges, Rudi Gernreich and Paco Rabanne....France Andrevie...must have researched the short-cropped, tube-shaped dresses of Rudi Gernreich, the minis of Courreges and the vinyl and metallic hinged designs of Paco Rabanne...}} Courrèges himself revived some of his sixties styles that year.{{cite journal |last1=Morris |first1=Bernadine |title=The Shape of Suits to Come |journal=The New York Times |date=1979-01-31 |page=C10 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1979/01/31/archives/the-shape-of-suits-to-come-the-things-that-characterized-chanel.html?searchResultPosition=3 |quote=There...was André Courrèges,...returning to the pure, architectural style that set the mood for clothes in 1963....The calf‐high boots, the above-the-knee hemlines, the no‐waistline shapes. Instead of being mostly in white, they now combined primary colors — blue, red and yellow — with white...}} Some fashion writers even proclaimed a miniskirt revival for 1979-80, particularly from Paris designers.{{cite journal |last1=Morris |first1=Bernadine |title=Minis and the 60s: Paris Fashions Look Back |journal=The New York Times |date=1979-10-16 |page=B13 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1979/10/16/archives/minis-and-the-60s-paris-fashions-look-back-specialty-was-the.html |access-date=2023-05-17 |quote=The news from Paris is clear on one thing: the mini is back....Emanuel Ungaro...showed plenty of minidresses.}}{{cite journal |last1=Morris |first1=Bernadine |title=In Paris, High Fashion's Latest Trip is to Outer Space |journal=The New York Times |date=1979-10-15 |page=B14 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1979/10/15/archives/in-paris-high-fashions-latest-trip-is-to-outer-space-a-fashionable.html |access-date=2023-05-17 |quote=...[Thierry Mugler's] cavewomen wear minidresses with shredded hems....Jean Claude de Luca...shows fringed miniskirts in leather.}}{{cite journal |last1=Morris |first1=Bernadine |title=With Spring in the Air, Designers Turn to Fall |journal=The New York Times |date=1979-04-27 |page=B4 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1979/04/27/archives/with-spring-in-the-air-designers-turn-to-fall-relaxed-air.html |access-date=2023-05-17 |quote=...[Willi Smith] sprinkled [his collection] liberally with miniskirts...'Cheerleader' skirts...snapped on over knitted polo shirts and matching footless tights...Other miniskirts were in the pile fabric that teddy bears wear...}} At this point, these styles were still considered avant-garde, though,{{cite journal |last1=Morris |first1=Bernadine |title=It Was Givenchy's Hour Again |journal=The New York Times |date=1979-09-14 |page=6 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1979/09/14/archives/it-was-givenchys-hour-again-appropriate-for-meetings-the-idea-of.html |access-date=2022-03-18 |quote=Only one dress was greeted with dead silence: a printed satin, shirred up the center, that bared the knees. It was the length that was distracting. The audience didn't know what to make of it.}} and a variety of mostly longer skirts were worn by the public, with the full, calf-length forms that had dominated the mid-seventies still prevalent but beginning to be made slimmer,{{cite news |last1=Hyde |first1=Nina S. |author-link=Nina Hyde |title=YSL Reintroduces the Grand-Entrance Era |newspaper=The Washington Post |date=1978-07-27 |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/1978/07/27/ysl-reintroduces-the-grand-entrance-era/92fadb1d-bbde-4a5d-a83f-40effcbd30a4/ |access-date=2022-04-04 |quote=...pencil-slim skirts...}} slightly shorter,{{cite journal |last1=Dullea |first1=Georgia |title=Fashion Revivals: Are the 1980s Really Ready for the 1960s? |journal=The New York Times |date=1979-10-22 |page=B6 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1979/10/22/archives/fashion-revivals-are-the-1980s-really-ready-for-the-1960s-forecast.html |access-date=2022-04-04 |quote=Miniskirts on the runway are fashion's way of making a little noise. The idea, as one Seventh Avenue observer put it, is that 'women will be so horrified that they will accept knee‐length skirts, which they have been resisting.' Already some women are weakening....'A few inches shorter,' they say, cautiously, 'but below the knee'.}}{{cite journal |last1=Morris |first1=Bernadine |title=At Milan Showings, the Clothes for Winter are Somber |journal=The New York Times |date=1978-03-31 |page=A16 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1978/03/31/archives/at-milan-showings-the-clothes-for-winter-are-somber-hemlines-are.html |access-date=2022-04-04 |quote=Knees are covered by skirts that frequently stop an inch or so below. Not exactly minis, but a bit shorter than last season.}}{{cite news |last1=Hyde |first1=Nina S. |author-link=Nina Hyde |title=Hourglass for Spring |newspaper=The Washington Post |date=1978-10-25 |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/1978/10/25/hourglass-for-spring/fb5e27a6-f77c-4b82-b31d-dda8447a8ab9/ |access-date=2022-04-04 |quote=The new proportion demands a hemline cut off an inch, sometimes two, below the knee. Some designers are showing them longer, but it is now obvious that the shorter skirt is the coming thing....'By next fall [1979],' predicts [Bloomingdale's Kal] Ruttenstein, the mid-calf skirt will not look fashionable.}} more brightly coloured,{{cite book |last1=Hendelson |first1=Marion |title=Funk & Wagnalls New Encyclopedia 1980 Yearbook: Events of 1979 |publisher=Funk & Wagnalls, Inc. |isbn=0-8343-0034-6 |page=164 |chapter=Fashion |date=9 March 1980 |quote=In colors, bright reds, blues, greens, oranges, and pinks took the lead over the long-popular neutrals.}}{{cite news |last1=Hyde |first1=Nina S. |author-link=Nina Hyde |title=The Spring Uniform |newspaper=The Washington Post |date=1978-11-16 |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/1978/11/16/the-spring-uniform/68c7eec2-b80f-4fb5-b4ab-82caa9c7cf45/ |access-date=2022-04-04 |quote=...[E]veryone will want to own...bright colors...because they haven't worn [them] in a long while.}} and often slit.{{cite news |last1=Hyde |first1=Nina S.|author-link=Nina Hyde |title=The Spring Uniform |newspaper=The Washington Post |date=1978-11-16 |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/1978/11/16/the-spring-uniform/68c7eec2-b80f-4fb5-b4ab-82caa9c7cf45/ |access-date=2022-04-04 |quote=The ingredients are a slim skirt with slits front, back or sideways, cut off somewhere just below the knee...slim, slit skirts that are short - but still below the knee...}} The mainstream return of the miniskirt would not come until the 1980s.

Miniskirts returned to mainstream acceptance in the 1980s, but with some differences from the 1960s:

Because women had worn skirts that covered the knee and often dropped to the calf for so many years during the 1970s, any skirt above the knee was often called a miniskirt in the late seventies and early eighties, even skirts that hit just above the knee.

They were not presented this time as the only length women should wear, nor was there societal pressure for women to shorten their hemlines, as there had been in the late 1960s when designers also presented a variety of lengths.{{cite news |last1=Hyde |first1=Nina |author-link=Nina Hyde |title=Miniskirts: The Height of Fashion |newspaper=The Washington Post |date=1982-05-10 |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/1982/05/10/miniskirts-the-height-of-fashion/6adbec55-b555-449d-9f16-86027a5ccd2e/ |access-date=2022-04-04 |quote=Having the miniskirt as an option is one of the big contrasts with the late 1960s, when minis were de rigueur and lots of grown women as well as kids followed the fashion and shortened their hems several inches above the knee.}}{{cite journal |last1=Buck |first1=Genevieve |title=The Skinny on the Mini, with Dark Hose and...Legs Together |journal=The Chicago Tribune |date=1987-04-08 |url=https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-1987-04-08-8701260704-story.html |access-date=2022-05-23 |quote=In the '60s, women kept shortening their skirts inch by inch so they could stay 'in fashion.' Each season, skirts had to be a certain number of inches above the knees...}}{{cite news |last1=Hyde |first1=Nina |author-link=Nina Hyde |title=The Mini Revival: Options for a New Age |newspaper=The Washington Post |date=1981-04-21 |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/1981/04/21/the-mini-revival-options-for-a-new-age/71e1253d-e898-4f6c-ad30-dbfd2cf63842/ |access-date=2022-04-04 |quote=...[O]bserves Bernie Ozer, of Associated Merchandising Corp. '...There is no suggestion that everyone has to wear one'.}} They were now just one option among a variety of lengths and styles of skirts and pants available to women,{{cite journal |last1=Morris |first1=Bernadine |title=The Directions of the Innovators |journal=The New York Times |date=1983-02-27 |page=132 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1983/02/27/magazine/the-directions-of-the-innovators.html |access-date=2022-04-04 |quote=Things were different in [the 1960s]. There seemed to be just one road for fashion – onward. Today,...things have changed. Short and long skirts coexist, just as skirts and trousers do.}}{{cite news |last1=Hyde |first1=Nina |author-link=Nina Hyde |title=The Mini Revival: Options for a New Age |newspaper=The Washington Post |date=1981-04-21 |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/1981/04/21/the-mini-revival-options-for-a-new-age/71e1253d-e898-4f6c-ad30-dbfd2cf63842/ |access-date=2022-04-04 |quote=And it is an optional item to suit one's mood, to be worn alternately with pants, which can be any length or shape, or a long folkloric skirt....[U]nlike before, the mini is only part of the high fashion wardrobe...[O]bserves Bernie Ozer, of Associated Merchandising Corp. 'It is strictly an alternative'...}}{{cite news |last1=Hyde |first1=Nina |author-link=Nina Hyde |title=The Mini Revival: Options for a New Age |newspaper=The Washington Post |date=1981-04-21 |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/1981/04/21/the-mini-revival-options-for-a-new-age/71e1253d-e898-4f6c-ad30-dbfd2cf63842/ |access-date=2022-04-04 |quote=Perry Ellis...has shown both very long and very short skirts...'[L]ength is not an issue. Both the long and the short really look beautiful'.}}{{cite news |last1=Hyde |first1=Nina|author-link=Nina Hyde |title=Miniskirts: The Height of Fashion |newspaper=The Washington Post |date=1982-05-10 |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/1982/05/10/miniskirts-the-height-of-fashion/6adbec55-b555-449d-9f16-86027a5ccd2e/ |access-date=2022-04-04 |quote=Sasha Cutter, 13,...was wearing a Kamali Rah-Rah skirt in sweat-shirt fabric with a Polo sweater over her leotard. She's just as happy in a long Lauren prairie skirt, she said, or jeans.}} and miniskirts tended to be in the minority among all the other kinds of skirts and pants seen on the streets, particularly in the early part of the decade. Throughout the decade, street lengths ranged from ankle to thigh, for both skirts and trousers, and most women wore their skirts just below the knee,{{cite book |last1=Mulvagh |first1=Jane |title=Vogue History of 20th Century Fashion |date=1988 |publisher=Viking, the Penguin Group |location=London, England |isbn=0-670-80172-0 |page=387 |chapter=1983 |quote=Despite the variety of hemlines offered in all the fashion capitals for daywear, the knee-length version prevailed.}}{{cite journal |last1=Schiro |first1=Anne-Marie |title=On Paris Streets, Fashion is Up-to-Date |journal=The New York Times |date=1985-03-29 |page=A22 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1985/03/29/style/on-paris-streets-fashion-is-up-to-date.html |access-date=2022-06-22 |quote=Many well-dressed French women are appearing in...a pencil-slim skirt that just covers the knee.}} as they also had in the seventies.{{cite book |last1=Sweetinburgh |first1=Thelma |title=1974 Britannica Book of the Year: Events of 1973 |publisher=Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc. |isbn=0-85229-294-5 |page=312 |chapter=Fashion and Dress |date=9 March 1974 |quote=...[J]ust below the knee seemed to be the most popular hemline level...}}

Miniskirts came in a greater variety of shapes than in the sixties, from full and flouncy to narrow to tight to abbreviated revivals of skirt shapes of the 1940s and '50s{{cite journal |last1=Morris |first1=Bernadine |title=Hemlines: Trend is Down, but Anything is Acceptable |journal=The New York Times |date=1981-02-17 |page=B10 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1981/02/17/style/hemlines-trend-is-down-but-anything-is-acceptable.html |access-date=2022-04-04 |quote=...Marc Bohan...has included above-the-knee party dresses in his collections for Christian Dior for several seasons.}}{{cite journal |last1=Buck |first1=Genevieve |title=The Skinny on the Mini, with Dark Hose and...Legs Together |journal=The Chicago Tribune |date=1987-04-08 |url=https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-1987-04-08-8701260704-story.html |access-date=2022-05-23 |quote=...[T]hese `87 minis are a new breed. They are stretchy and supple and sexy. Or, they are bubbly, flared, pouffed, belled. They are, in a word, varied.}} like sheath skirts, trumpet skirts, tulip skirts, and bubble/puffball skirts. Above-the-knee versions of strapless 1950s dresses were seen, as were formal minis with bustles and trains in the back.{{cite journal |last1=Morris |first1=Bernadine |title=In Paris, Fashion Incursions from Abroad |journal=The New York Times |date=1981-04-08 |page=C18 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1981/04/08/garden/in-paris-fashion-incursions-from-abroad.html |access-date=2022-06-22 |quote=Valentino...showed dresses that were mini length in front and swept back to form bustle trains.}} Even tutus were shown mid-decade.{{cite book |last1=Mulvagh |first1=Jane |title=Vogue History of 20th Century Fashion |date=1988 |publisher=Viking, the Penguin Group |location=London, England |isbn=0-670-80172-0 |page=396 |chapter=1986 |quote=...[L]egs...were flaunted under puff-ball and tutu hemlines...}}{{cite book |last1=Sweetinburgh |first1=Thelma |title=1984 Britannica Book of the Year: Events of 1983 |publisher=Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc. |isbn=0-85229-417-4 |page=375 |chapter=Fashion and Dress |date=9 March 1984 |quote=...a flaring miniskirt in bright coloured tulle...}} Many above-the-knee dresses had noticeable shoulder pads.{{cite journal |last1=Morris |first1=Bernadine |title=Armani, Fendi, Missoni and Versace: The Italian Designers Come to Town |journal=The New York Times |date=1979-09-21 |page=A18 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1979/09/21/archives/armani-fendi-missoni-and-versace-the-italian-designers-come-to-town.html |access-date=2022-04-04 |quote=...[A]bove‐the‐knee hemlines and extravagantly padded shoulders...marked the proceedings.}}{{cite news |last1=Hyde |first1=Nina S. |author-link=Nina Hyde |title=Skirting the Mini |newspaper=The Washington Post |date=1979-10-16 |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/1979/10/16/skirting-the-mini/116559c2-8d45-46fa-a5b5-6ed9c0008f36/ |access-date=2022-04-04 |quote=Karl Lagerfeld's...minis with padded shoulders...are a breed apart.}}{{cite journal |last1=Morris |first1=Bernadine |title=Couture: Styles of Splendor |journal=The New York Times |date=1981-08-04 |page=C6 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1981/08/04/style/couture-styles-of-splendor.html |access-date=2021-12-01 |quote=Saint Laurent...bares the knees and pads his shoulders...}}{{cite journal |last1=Buck |first1=Genevieve |title=The Skinny on the Mini, with Dark Hose and...Legs Together |journal=The Chicago Tribune |date=1987-04-08 |url=https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-1987-04-08-8701260704-story.html |access-date=2022-05-23 |quote=If short becomes the fashion, one of the first to know it and put it into production will be Dallas designer Victor Costa...[H]is all-time best-seller is an interpretation of a dress that he himself designed in the '60s. 'He gave it a little more shoulder, stuffed some petticoats beneath and – voila, it's today,' says [Costa colleague Bob] Miller.}}

They were worn with a greater range of heel heights than in the sixties, depending on the shape of the miniskirt, with flats preferred for some styles and high-heeled pumps preferred for others.{{cite journal |last1=Donovan |first1=Carrie |title=Created with a Leg to Stand On |journal=The New York Times |date=1982-01-31 |page=68 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1982/01/31/magazine/fashion-created-with-a-leg-to-stand-on.html |access-date=2022-06-22 |quote=Influential designers in Paris, Milan and New York have included decidedly shortened hemlines in their spring collections....anywhere from one to...three inches above the knee...[I]n Valentino's case,...[a]ll are worn with high heel[s]...}}{{cite news |last1=Hyde |first1=Nina |author-link=Nina Hyde |title=Miniskirts: The Height of Fashion |newspaper=The Washington Post |date=1982-05-10 |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/1982/05/10/miniskirts-the-height-of-fashion/6adbec55-b555-449d-9f16-86027a5ccd2e/ |access-date=2022-04-04 |quote=Farah Naim, 18,...was wearing a black leather zip-front miniskirt (from Commander Salamander), dark hose and salmon-pink satin bridesmaid's pumps from a thrift shop.}}{{cite book |last1=Mulvagh |first1=Jane |title=Vogue History of 20th Century Fashion |date=1988 |publisher=Viking, the Penguin Group |location=London, England |isbn=0-670-80172-0 |page=396 |chapter=1986 |quote=High heels drew attention to legs...under puff-ball and tutu hemlines...}} In the early part of the decade, opaque tights, sometimes brightly coloured,{{cite news |last1=Hyde |first1=Nina |author-link=Nina Hyde |title=The Mini Revival: Options for a New Age |newspaper=The Washington Post |date=1981-04-21 |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/1981/04/21/the-mini-revival-options-for-a-new-age/71e1253d-e898-4f6c-ad30-dbfd2cf63842/ |access-date=2022-04-04 |quote=The mini revival...stirred more than a year ago [early 1980] when...big, sweatery mini-dresses were picked up by kids who wore them with thick, colorful pantyhose.}}{{cite news |last1=Hyde |first1=Nina |author-link=Nina Hyde |title=Miniskirts: The Height of Fashion |newspaper=The Washington Post |date=1982-05-10 |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/1982/05/10/miniskirts-the-height-of-fashion/6adbec55-b555-449d-9f16-86027a5ccd2e/ |access-date=2022-04-04 |quote=Vickie Fitzgerald, 18, occasionally wears a mini...For now, she wears tights, but expects that once she has a tan she'll go barelegged.}} and flat, calf-high boots might be worn with the more casual styles, much like in the mid-sixties.{{cite journal |editor1-last=Finley |editor1-first=Ruth |title=Paris Pret-a-Porter – Fall/Winter |journal=Fashion International |date=1980-05-01 |volume=VIII |issue=8 |page=3 |location=New York, NY, USA |quote=The mini is best with short cable stitch knit tops worn with thick wooly tights, soft suede boots.}}{{cite news |last1=Hyde |first1=Nina |author-link=Nina Hyde |title=The Mini Revival: Options for a New Age |newspaper=The Washington Post |date=1981-04-21 |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/1981/04/21/the-mini-revival-options-for-a-new-age/71e1253d-e898-4f6c-ad30-dbfd2cf63842/ |access-date=2022-04-04 |quote=The 1981 mini...is being worn...with tights and flats or flat boots...[T]he miniskirt worn with romantic blouses with full sleeves and soft crushed boots...}} Throughout the period, dressier styles with high heels tended to be worn with hose ranging from slightly tinted to opaque.{{cite journal |last1=Donovan |first1=Carrie |title=Created with a Leg to Stand On |journal=The New York Times |date=1982-01-31 |page=68 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1982/01/31/magazine/fashion-created-with-a-leg-to-stand-on.html |access-date=2022-06-22 |quote=The tinted or patterned stocking accomplishes two things at once, drawing subtle attention to the legs and supplying a bit of attractive camouflage. For what does look decidedly démodé is a long stretch of bare, unadorned leg beneath the shortened hemline.}} A punk influence was sometimes seen when miniskirts were paired with combat boots or Doc Martens.{{cite news |last1=Hyde |first1=Nina |author-link=Nina Hyde |title=Miniskirts: The Height of Fashion |newspaper=The Washington Post |date=1982-05-10 |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/1982/05/10/miniskirts-the-height-of-fashion/6adbec55-b555-449d-9f16-86027a5ccd2e/ |access-date=2022-04-04 |quote=Sahara Woodell, 18,...was wearing a lace-trimmed cotton miniskirt with a jean jacket and combat boots.}}

Another difference between 1960s miniskirts and 1980s miniskirts is that 1980s miniskirts might be worn over footless tights, long tight shorts, various lengths of thermal underwear, or tight, cropped pants, a trend that began with designers like Norma Kamali, Perry Ellis, and Willi Smith in 1979.{{cite book |last1=Mulvagh |first1=Jane |title=Vogue History of 20th Century Fashion |date=1988 |publisher=Viking, the Penguin Group |location=London, England |isbn=0-670-80172-0 |page=367 |chapter=1979 |quote=Norma Kamali...and Perry Ellis introduced the short rah-rah skirt, worn with...pedal pushers.}}{{cite journal |last1=Morris |first1=Bernadine |title=With Spring in the Air, Designers Turn to Fall |journal=The New York Times |date=1979-04-27 |page=B4 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1979/04/27/archives/with-spring-in-the-air-designers-turn-to-fall-relaxed-air.html |access-date=2023-05-17 |quote=...Willi Smith...'[c]heerleader' skirts...over...footless tights...}} In the early eighties, the footless tights might be referred to by the 1950s terms clamdiggers, pedal-pushers, capri pants, or toreadors, depending on their length, but in the second half of the eighties, all footless tights began to be referred to as leggings. Also at the end of the eighties, visible bike shorts were often worn with miniskirts.{{cite news |last1=Hyde |first1=Nina |author-link=Nina Hyde |title=Southern Exposures |newspaper=The Washington Post |date=1987-10-14 |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/1987/10/14/southern-exposures/2892ad33-58a6-4c04-bc0f-72d4b51dadd5/ |access-date=2022-06-22 |quote=Vivienne Westwood...showed bands of fabric not much wider than a belt, under which models wore...'panties'...that looked like bike shorts.}}{{cite journal |last1=Morris |first1=Bernadine |title=In Paris, Youth is the New Wave |journal=The New York Times |date=1987-07-28 |page=B4 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1987/07/28/style/in-paris-youth-is-the-new-wave.html?searchResultPosition=19 |quote=Pierre Cardin...showed...black sequined bicycle shorts under bouffant three-tiered skirts...}}

In the early eighties, miniskirts were still considered avant-garde and unusual among the public,{{cite journal |last1=Morris |first1=Bernadine |title=Hemlines: Trend is Down, but Anything is Acceptable |journal=The New York Times |date=1981-02-17 |page=B10 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1981/02/17/style/hemlines-trend-is-down-but-anything-is-acceptable.html |access-date=2022-04-04 |quote=...[S]aid Marc Bohan...[of] Christian Dior, 'Women don't seem to be too eager to rush into short skirts'.}}{{cite news |last1=Hyde |first1=Nina |author-link=Nina Hyde |title=Knees, Please |newspaper=The Washington Post |date=1980-11-04 |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/1980/11/04/knees-please/e1fe5047-20f9-4b76-9e9b-a7d046b1daeb/ |access-date=2022-04-04 |quote=Henri Bendel president Geraldine Stutz says we will never see the miniskirt as a major fashion again.}}{{cite news |last1=Hyde |first1=Nina |author-link=Nina Hyde |title=Miniskirts: The Height of Fashion |newspaper=The Washington Post |date=1982-05-10 |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/1982/05/10/miniskirts-the-height-of-fashion/6adbec55-b555-449d-9f16-86027a5ccd2e/ |access-date=2022-04-04 |quote=Sahara Woodell, 18,...said she could never wear a mini when she was a student at Springfield High School [1978-82]. 'I was the only one wearing them and I'd get hassled by the teachers and the boys'.}}{{cite journal |last1=Cohen |first1=Joyce |title=A Higher Grade of Campus Dress |journal=The New York Times |date=1981-10-11 |page=32 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1981/10/11/nyregion/a-higher-grade-of-campus-dress.html |access-date=2022-04-04 |quote='There are two mini-skirts on campus, and I own one of them,' said Cecelia Manning, a Yale senior...}} though designers had begun showing them again in 1979{{cite news |last1=Hyde |first1=Nina S. |author-link=Nina Hyde |title=Skirting the Mini |newspaper=The Washington Post |date=1979-10-16 |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/1979/10/16/skirting-the-mini/116559c2-8d45-46fa-a5b5-6ed9c0008f36/ |access-date=2022-04-04 |quote=In the past week of showings of ready-to-wear for next spring, [fashion buyers] had seen lots of short, short skirts.}} and had begun shortening some skirts to just above the knee in 1978.{{cite journal |last1=Morris |first1=Bernadine |title=Hemlines: Trend is Down, but Anything is Acceptable |journal=The New York Times |date=1981-02-17 |page=B10 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1981/02/17/style/hemlines-trend-is-down-but-anything-is-acceptable.html |access-date=2022-04-04 |quote=About three years ago [1978], the direction reversed and designers began shortening skirts - to just below the knee, to the middle of the knee and even clearing the knee.}} Some minis from 1979 and '80 were modeled after sweatshirts.{{cite news |last1=Hyde |first1=Nina |author-link=Nina Hyde |title=Familiar Wrinkles |newspaper=The Washington Post |date=1980-10-23 |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/1980/10/23/familiar-wrinkles/690fd75b-b88b-454c-9e85-d6f0739052d3/ |access-date=2022-04-04 |quote=...[Y]oung Parisiennes are wearing sweaters that stop above the knee or long sweatshirts and thick tights...}}{{cite book |last1=Sweetinburgh |first1=Thelma |title=1981 Britannica Book of the Year: Events of 1980 |publisher=Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc. |isbn=0-85229-381-X |page=377 |chapter=Fashion and Dress |date=9 March 1981 |quote=The everyday city costume for summer was the cotton jersey T-shirt dress with fancy striping...In some cases the ribbed hemline introduced a low bubble effect...Some models were abridged to mid-thigh...}} Others were lifted straight out of the Space Age mid-sixties.{{cite journal |last1=Dullea |first1=Georgia |title=Fashion Revivals: Are the 1980s Really Ready for the 1960s? |journal=The New York Times |date=1979-10-22 |page=B6 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1979/10/22/archives/fashion-revivals-are-the-1980s-really-ready-for-the-1960s-forecast.html |access-date=2022-04-04 |quote=The 1980s, to judge by the recent goings‐on in Milan and Paris, are opening with a rerun of the 60s.}}{{cite journal |editor1-last=Finley |editor1-first=Ruth |title=Paris Spring/Summer 1980 – Short...Angular...Bare |journal=Fashion International |date=1979-12-01 |volume=VIII |issue=3 |page=1 |location=New York, NY, USA |quote=Parisian designers, inspired by the 1960s, showed the skimpiest apparel since the heyday of Courreges....Miles of legs via shortened skirts: knee, mid-thigh, micro-mini...}}{{cite journal |last1=Duka |first1=John |title=The Spring Collections: Looking Backward |journal=New York |date=1980-11-26 |page=72 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=2OECAAAAMBAJ&dq=%22perry+ellis%22+1980+farthingale&pg=PA72 |access-date=2022-06-22 |quote=Seventh Avenue designers...move another decade toward the present with their 'new' collections of sixties clothes: ruffled necklines, feathered cocktail dresses, dropped waistlines, and miniskirts...Pauline Trigere...pulled out some of her minis from the sixties...}} Some were inspired by punk.{{cite news |last1=Hyde |first1=Nina |author-link=Nina Hyde |title=The Mini Revival: Options for a New Age |newspaper=The Washington Post |date=1981-04-21 |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/1981/04/21/the-mini-revival-options-for-a-new-age/71e1253d-e898-4f6c-ad30-dbfd2cf63842/ |access-date=2022-04-04 |quote=...[T]he black plastic mini has been part of the punk uniform...}}

The most influential designer of miniskirts in the early eighties was probably Norma Kamali. In 1980, when there was a fad for wearing oversized sweatshirts as minidresses,{{cite news |last1=Hyde |first1=Nina |author-link=Nina Hyde |title=The Sweat Shirt Swath |newspaper=The Washington Post |date=1980-08-18 |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/1981/08/18/the-sweat-shirt-swath/54c89217-ae2c-4237-bfc1-cc4a3e4008c4/ |access-date=2022-04-04 |quote=The sweat shirt extends to a skimp dress...}} she introduced sweatshirt-fabric versions of the flounced, hip-yoked, above-the-knee skirts she had first presented in 1979, called rah-rah skirts in the UK.{{cite book |last1=Mulvagh |first1=Jane |title=Vogue History of 20th Century Fashion |date=1988 |publisher=Viking, the Penguin Group |location=London, England |isbn=0-670-80172-0 |page=371 |chapter=1980 |quote=Kenzo, Chloé and others now showed pretty, floral printed-cotton versions of the rah-rah introduced by Kamali and [Perry] Ellis in 1979.}} In 1981 and '82, miniskirts from this "Sweats" line would reach mainstream levels of popularity and make Kamali a household name.{{cite book |last1=Mulvagh |first1=Jane |title=Vogue History of 20th Century Fashion |date=1988 |publisher=Viking, the Penguin Group |location=London, England |isbn=0-670-80172-0 |page=371 |chapter=1980 |quote=Norma Kamali launched her 'sweats' collection: rah-rah skirts, leggings and jogging suits cut in grey and brightly coloured cotton sweatshirting. The tops often had huge, American-footballer shoulder pads. These low-priced co-ordinates were copied worldwide.}}{{cite news |last1=Hyde |first1=Nina |author-link=Nina Hyde |title=Comfortable Classiness |newspaper=The Washington Post |date=1983-03-25 |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/1983/03/25/comfortable-classiness/80536bd8-27da-4f8a-84c2-1a3645038eea/ |access-date=2022-06-22 |quote=One year ago [1982], all you saw being worn by fashionable women was Norma Kamali.}}

File:Woman in rah-rah skirt.jpg, c.2010.]]

In the spring of 1982 (as featured in the June issue of Time Magazine that year),{{citation needed|date=September 2024}} short skirts began to re-emerge more strongly among the public,{{cite news |last1=Hyde |first1=Nina |author-link=Nina Hyde |title=Miniskirts: The Height of Fashion |newspaper=The Washington Post |date=1982-05-10 |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/1982/05/10/miniskirts-the-height-of-fashion/6adbec55-b555-449d-9f16-86027a5ccd2e/ |access-date=2022-04-04 |quote=It is hardly the rage it is in London, or the prevailing mode as in Milan. But the priority is about the same as in Paris. With many young women,...the mini is back.}} notably in the form of "rah-rahs", which were modeled on those worn by female cheerleaders at sporting and other events.

By 1983, miniskirts had become more widespread, but the Kamali-style full versions common in 1981-82 had waned in popularity in favor of slim, straight minis in jean-cut blue denim,{{cite news |last1=Hyde |first1=Nina |author-link=Nina Hyde |title=Fashion Notes |newspaper=The Washington Post |date=1982-10-17 |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/1982/10/17/fashion-notes/e2796464-dc71-4fa6-9c78-7165695a3700/ |access-date=2022-04-04 |quote=There are...lots of miniskirts in denim being worn in Milan...}}{{cite news |last1=Hyde |first1=Nina |author-link=Nina Hyde |title=Miniskirts: The Height of Fashion |newspaper=The Washington Post |date=1982-05-10 |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/1982/05/10/miniskirts-the-height-of-fashion/6adbec55-b555-449d-9f16-86027a5ccd2e/ |access-date=2022-04-04 |quote=...Dana Seymour, 20,...like[s] the Jag jean miniskirt she was wearing while shopping...}}{{cite journal |editor1-last=Finley |editor1-first=Ruth |editor-link=Ruth Finley |title=Looking Toward Summer: Tops & Bottoms |journal=Fashion International |date=1983-03-01 |volume=XI |issue=6 |page=4 |quote=Mini-skirts in super bleach denim range from 14" micro length to 17". Styles are 5-pocket...}} as well as other trim styles.{{cite book |last1=Sweetinburgh |first1=Thelma |title=1984 Britannica Book of the Year: Events of 1983 |publisher=Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc. |isbn=0-85229-417-4 |pages=374–375 |chapter=Fashion and Dress |date=1984 |quote=...[T]he previously popular 'ra-ra' skirt, well above the knee and flared,...was replaced by one that was equally short but tight and flat, front and back,...very snug...}}

Kenzo had been almost the only designer to champion miniskirts during their nadir in the mid-seventies, and he was vindicated in the eighties as several of the miniskirt styles he had shown back then{{cite journal |last1=Dorsey |first1=Hebe |title=Kenzo Grows Up |journal=The New York Times |date=1976-11-14 |page=239 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1976/11/14/archives/fashion-kenzo-grows-up.html |access-date=2022-04-04 |quote=[At Kenzo, t]here were short skirts with balloon tops, caught under a low belt; some skirts then swirled out, but others, neat and tapered, were just little wraparounds.}} were taken up by other designers.{{cite news |last1=Hyde |first1=Nina |author-link=Nina Hyde |title=Miniskirts: The Height of Fashion |newspaper=The Washington Post |date=1982-05-10 |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/1982/05/10/miniskirts-the-height-of-fashion/6adbec55-b555-449d-9f16-86027a5ccd2e/ |access-date=2022-04-04 |quote=Kenzo from Paris and Kamali from New York have popularised the flounced-skirt variety...}}

Yves Saint Laurent had believed short skirts would never return in the mid-seventies,{{cite news |last1=Dorsey |first1=Hebe |title=From Paris, Skirting the Issue with Ruffles and Flourishes |newspaper=The Washington Post |date=1977-01-27 |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/1977/01/27/from-paris-skirting-the-issue-with-ruffles-and-flourishes/662f316a-5dfe-4038-afcd-b043650ba962/ |access-date=2022-04-04}} but he led the move to above-the-knee skirts starting in 1978{{cite journal |last1=Morris |first1=Bernadine |title=The Message is Clear, but How Will It Be Received? |journal=The New York Times |date=1978-04-16 |page=70 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1978/04/16/archives/message-is-clear-but-how-will-it-be-received-skirting-the-mini.html |access-date=2022-04-04 |quote=...[T]he chief proponent [of knee-baring skirts]...is Yves Saint Laurent.}}{{cite news |last1=Hyde |first1=Nina |title=Familiar Wrinkles |newspaper=The Washington Post |date=1980-10-23 |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/1980/10/23/familiar-wrinkles/690fd75b-b88b-454c-9e85-d6f0739052d3/ |access-date=2024-01-24 |quote=...[Saint Laurent's] shifts...have...belts tied low on the hips to hike them to miniskirt length.}} and during the first half of the eighties was known for a number of brief but dressy skirt styles,{{cite journal |last1=Morris |first1=Bernadine |title=Saint Laurent: Shorter Skirts, Bubble Shapes |journal=The New York Times |date=1981-07-30 |page=C1 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1981/07/30/garden/saint-laurent-shorter-skirts-bubble-shapes.html?searchResultPosition=32 |quote=...At a time when most prestigious French couture designers are enveloping the body in soft, loose clothes that descend almost to the ankles, Saint Laurent's hemlines clear the knees....[H]e showed the clothes with high-heeled...pumps...There was [model] Mounia in a big bloused jacket in brown suede over a narrow, brown velvet skirt that stopped a few inches above her knees....taffeta dresses that billowed around the body, then were gathered in to form a brief hemline flounce that stopped well above the knees.}}{{cite journal |last1=Morris |first1=Bernadine |title=Chemise Returns at Saint Laurent |journal=The New York Times |date=1983-07-28 |page=C8 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1983/07/28/garden/chemise-returns-at-saint-laurent.html?searchResultPosition=6 |quote=...Saint Laurent's chemises are the talk of the town....He has added squarely padded shoulders...and shortened the hemlines to clear the knees, sometimes with a considerable margin to spare.}} especially slim, black leather miniskirts.{{cite news |last1=Hyde |first1=Nina |author-link=Nina Hyde |title=Miniskirts: The Height of Fashion |newspaper=The Washington Post |date=1982-05-10 |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/1982/05/10/miniskirts-the-height-of-fashion/6adbec55-b555-449d-9f16-86027a5ccd2e/ |access-date=2022-04-04 |quote=...[T]he tight, black leather skirt is a spinoff from Yves Saint Laurent...}}{{cite news |last1=Hyde |first1=Nina |author-link=Nina Hyde |title=Fashion Notes |newspaper=The Washington Post |date=1982-04-04 |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/1982/04/04/fashion-notes/5ecaeead-41b0-4bbc-9816-8be9bb41ab35/ |access-date=2022-04-04 |quote=[A] straight black skirt...that stops above the knee would put you in the camp with Yves Saint Laurent...All the designers like the skirt in leather (YSL did it first at least a year ago)...}}{{cite news |last1=Hyde |first1=Nina |author-link=Nina Hyde |title=YSL, Robust and Refined High Hemlines for His Paris Show |newspaper=The Washington Post |date=1985-03-28 |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/1985/03/28/ysl-robust-and-refined-high-hemlines-for-his-paris-show/3e8aac20-cda0-4804-86b6-c0cdf58ff079/ |access-date=2022-04-04 |quote=...Saint Laurent faithfuls...might...wear...the short black skirt [they] probably already own...Yves Saint Laurent...established his preference for short skirts, cut off above the knee or shorter....[H]igh heels...are shown with everything.}}

Karl Lagerfeld had begun showing miniskirts again at the end of the seventies{{cite news |last1=Hyde |first1=Nina S. |author-link=Nina Hyde |title=Skirting the Mini |newspaper=The Washington Post |date=1979-10-16 |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/1979/10/16/skirting-the-mini/116559c2-8d45-46fa-a5b5-6ed9c0008f36/ |access-date=2022-04-04 |quote=Karl Lagerfeld, who designs for Chloe, showed the shortest miniskirts.}} and in 1983 would take over the house of Chanel,{{cite book |last1=Mulvagh |first1=Jane |title=Vogue History of 20th Century Fashion |date=1988 |publisher=Viking, the Penguin Group |location=London, England |isbn=0-670-80172-0 |page=384 |chapter=1983 |quote=Karl Lagerfeld added to his freelance commitments by becoming designer-in-chief of Chanel couture.}}{{cite journal |last1=Morris |first1=Bernadine |title=Givenchy and Chanel Excite Paris |journal=The New York Times |date=1982-10-19 |page=C8 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1982/10/19/style/givenchy-and-chanel-excite-paris.html |access-date=2022-04-04 |quote=It has been announced that [Karl Lagerfeld] will serve as artistic director of the [Chanel] couture collection to be shown next January [1983] and it has been rumored that he had something to do with the [1982] ready-to-wear...}} where he soon began adding minis and microminis to the offerings,{{cite journal |last1=Morris |first1=Bernadine |title=Givenchy and Chanel Excite Paris |journal=The New York Times |date=1982-10-19 |page=C8 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1982/10/19/style/givenchy-and-chanel-excite-paris.html |access-date=2022-04-04 |quote=The Chanel...skirts have been shortened...Now they clear the knees....[T]he skirts are not only short but tight, causing the models to mince and wriggle rather than stride down the runway....[T]he black-toe pumps have greatly elevated heels, so the look sometimes appears to be a parody of itself...}}{{cite book |last1=Mulvagh |first1=Jane |title=Vogue History of 20th Century Fashion |date=1988 |publisher=Viking, the Penguin Group |location=London, England |isbn=0-670-80172-0 |page=398 |chapter=1986 |quote=...Karl Lagerfeld at Chanel almost parodied status dressing,...[showing] miniskirts hung with chains and quilted like the handbags.}}{{cite journal |last1=Morris |first1=Bernadine |title=In the Front Rank: Lagerfeld and Montana |journal=The New York Times |date=1986-03-25 |page=C14 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1986/03/25/style/in-the-front-rank-lagerfeld-and-montana.html |access-date=2022-04-04 |quote=...Ines de la Fressange, the model who personifies the Chanel image, appeared on the runway in a suede micro miniskirt...}} a surprise because Chanel herself had hated 1960s miniskirts, considering the knees to be an ugly part of the body.{{cite news |last1=Hyde |first1=Nina |author-link=Nina Hyde |title=Shooting for the Hip |newspaper=The Washington Post |date=1987-03-25 |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/1987/03/25/shooting-for-the-hip/ca703425-24de-4fc2-a2b6-9e103d4ffb47/ |access-date=2022-04-04 |quote=...Chanel...thought the knee was the ugliest part of a woman's body...}}{{cite journal |last1=Morris |first1=Bernadine |title=Givenchy and Chanel Excite Paris |journal=The New York Times |date=1982-10-19 |page=C8 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1982/10/19/style/givenchy-and-chanel-excite-paris.html |access-date=2022-04-04 |quote=No matter what happened, Chanel always covered the knees.}}

Throughout the 1980s, beginning at the end of the seventies, designers experimented with shortening heavily constructed historical dress styles, mostly from the 1950s, with fifties crinoline skirts,{{cite journal |last1=Morris |first1=Bernadine |title=Viewpoints: 3 Fashion Capitals |journal=The New York Times |date=1986-10-28 |page=B20 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1986/10/28/style/viewpoints-3-fashion-capitals.html |access-date=2022-06-22 |quote=All over Europe, fashion designers...combine the miniskirts of the 1960s with the crinolines of the 1950s...}}{{cite journal |last1=Morris |first1=Bernadine |title=David Cameron, Brief and Bouffant |journal=The New York Times |date=1986-11-11 |page=A16 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1986/11/11/style/david-cameron-brief-and-bouffant.html?searchResultPosition=10 |quote=...[A]lmost everything in the [David Cameron] collection is...mid-thigh length...The brief skirts, even those in leather, are puffed out with myriad ruffled petticoats....The result is an unlikely mixture of the Courreges look of the 1960's and the tutu.}} fifties sheath skirts, and fifties bubble/puffball skirts{{cite journal |last1=Duka |first1=John |title=The Spring Collections: Looking Backward |journal=New York |date=1979-11-26 |page=72 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=2OECAAAAMBAJ&dq=%22perry+ellis%22+1980+farthingale&pg=PA72 |access-date=2022-06-22 |quote=...Oscar de la Renta's thigh-high bubble dresses.}}{{cite journal |last1=Morris |first1=Bernadine |title=20 Designers Prescribe a Tonic for Spring |journal=The New York Times |date=1982-01-05 |page=B12 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1982/01/05/style/20-designers-prescribe-a-tonic-for-spring.html?searchResultPosition=1 |quote=Bill Blass:...[A] short dress...could perhaps have a bubble skirt and end above the knees.}} shown in above-the-knee lengths as early as 1979. Styles from the deeper past were also shortened. In the early eighties, Perry Ellis referenced the sixteenth through eighteenth centuries by altering the shape of the flouncy, hip-yoked miniskirts he'd been showing since 1979. In 1980, he bolstered them with petticoats and added stiffening to extend them out to the sides, causing some fashion writers to compare them to panniers.{{cite journal |last1=Morris |first1=Bernadine |title=Fashion: The American Accent is on Pants |journal=The New York Times |date=1979-11-06 |page=B10 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1979/11/06/archives/fashion-the-american-accent-is-on-pants.html |access-date=2024-01-23 |quote=...[Perry Ellis] has been showing miniskirts....[T]hey have hip yokes and stiffening underneath the hips to puff them out at the sides like 18th-century panniers....[U]nder the pastel skirts, you'll see organdy petticoats.}} The following year, he added stuffed-organdy padding to the skirts and referred to them as farthingales, a sixteenth-century term for a similarly padded floor-length skirt.{{cite news |last1=Hyde |first1=Nina S. |author-link=Nina Hyde |title=Round the Edges of American Fashion |newspaper=The Washington Post |date=1980-11-07 |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/1979/11/07/rounding-the-edges-of-american-fashion/93ecda0a-69f1-4b31-9d86-9c36dd41843c/ |access-date=2022-04-04 |quote=Perry Ellis...showed...skirts that are padded below the waist at the hip....Ellis calls them 'farthingales'...Ellis...has shaped his linen farthingales with a wad of organdy....[Y]ou can wear them with padding and when you want to change, just take out the padding.}}{{cite journal |last1=Duka |first1=John |title=The Spring Collections: Looking Backward |journal=New York |date=1980-11-26 |page=73 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=2OECAAAAMBAJ&dq=%22perry+ellis%22+1980+farthingale&pg=PA72 |access-date=2022-06-22 |quote=Perry Ellis's...short, hip-yoked, padded skirt, or farthingale...}} A far more influential example of a truncated historical skirt style came from former punk designer Vivienne Westwood. In 1985, British designer Westwood offered her first "mini-crini,"{{cite news |last1=Hyde |first1=Nina |author-link=Nina Hyde |title=Petticoats Plus: Skirts' New Flair |newspaper=The Washington Post |date=1986-12-15 |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/1986/12/15/petticoats-plus-skirts-new-flair/3c66611c-8129-4dad-a7c0-1e0948d4a4da/ |access-date=2022-06-22 |quote=Westwood introduced what she calls 'mini-crinis' for spring a year ago [1985]. She made wired crinolines as separate underskirts to put under her flannel schoolgirl dresses and pleated skirts...There are jeans skirts and bias-cut black velvet dresses with the crinolines built right in....}} an abbreviated version of the Victorian crinoline.{{cite web |last1=Staff writer |title=Vivienne Westwood designs |url=http://www.vam.ac.uk/content/articles/v/vivienne-westwood-designs/ |publisher=Victoria and Albert Museum|access-date=5 June 2015}} Its mini-length, bouffant silhouette inspired the puffball skirts widely presented by more established designers such as Christian Lacroix.{{cite book|last1=Cicolini|first1=Alice|last2=British Council|title=Inside out: underwear and style in the UK|url=https://archive.org/details/insideoutunderwe00arms|url-access=registration|date=2000|publisher=Black Dog|isbn=9781901033274}}{{cite book |last1=Evans |first1=Caroline |editor1-last=Breward |editor1-first=Christopher |editor2-last=Ehrman |editor2-first=Edwina |editor3-last=Evans |editor3-first=Caroline |title=The London look : fashion from street to catwalk |date=2004 |page=149| publisher=Yale University Press / Museum of London |location=New Haven |isbn=9780300103991 |chapter=Cultural Capital 1976–2000}}{{cite news |last1=Hyde |first1=Nina |author-link=Nina Hyde |title=Petticoats Plus: Skirts' New Flair |newspaper=The Washington Post |date=1986-12-15 |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/1986/12/15/petticoats-plus-skirts-new-flair/3c66611c-8129-4dad-a7c0-1e0948d4a4da/ |access-date=2022-06-22 |quote=Westwood herself takes full credit for the crinoline revival.}} In 1989, Westwood's mini-crini was described as having combined two conflicting ideals – the crinoline, representing a "mythology of restriction and encumbrance in woman's dress", and the "equally dubious mythology of liberation" associated with the miniskirt.{{cite book |last1=Evans |first1=Caroline |last2=Thornton |first2=Minna |title=Women and Fashion: A New Look |date=1989 |publisher=Quartet Books |location=London |isbn=9780704326910 |pages=[https://archive.org/details/womenfashionnewl00evan/page/148 148–150] |url=https://archive.org/details/womenfashionnewl00evan/page/148 }}

Sixties-revivalist Stephen Sprouse showed his first collection in 1983{{cite journal |last1=Duka |first1=John |title=The Rock Connection |journal=The New York Times |date=1984-08-26 |page=190 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1984/08/26/magazine/the-rock-connection.html |access-date=2022-04-04 |quote=...[S]ince April 1983, when his first collection was presented in a show of young designers sponsored by Polaroid, Sprouse has shot to international prominence.}} and favored almost period-perfect shift minidresses and trapeze minidresses in graffiti prints, blacks, and searing sixties brights, including fluorescents,{{cite book |last1=Elkins |first1=Ann M. |title=The Americana Annual 1985: An Encyclopedia of the Events of 1984 |publisher=Grolier Incorporated |isbn=0-7172-0216-X |page=224 |chapter=Fashion |quote=Stephen Sprouse in his retrospective minidresses revived the Day-Glo neon colors of the 1960s.}}{{cite journal |last1=Goodman |first1=Wendy |title=Stephen Sprouse Tries a Comeback with a Solid New Store |journal=New York |date=1987-09-21 |volume=20 |issue=37 |page=139 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=l-UCAAAAMBAJ&dq=%22stephen+sprouse%22&pg=PA139 |access-date=2022-08-18 |quote=...eleven-inch micro-skirts in Day-Glo solids...}} with geometric paillettes and sixties-style cutouts, sometimes of peace signs.{{cite book |last1=Mulvagh |first1=Jane |author-link=Jane Mulvagh |title=Vogue History of 20th Century Fashion |date=1988 |publisher=Viking, the Penguin Group |location=London, England |isbn=0-670-80172-0 |pages=389, 390 |chapter=1984 |quote=Stephen Sprouse combined graffiti, xeroxes and video silk-screen prints. The ghost of Edie Sedgwick, the Warhol starlet of the sixties, stalked his runway in day-glow TV cut-out dresses, hipster minis, tubes and protest jewellery....Stephen Sprouse's electric orange mini-dress suspended from an asymmetrical shoulder strap and covered in paillettes.}}{{cite news |last1=Hyde |first1=Nina |author-link=Nina Hyde |title=True Colors |newspaper=The Washington Post |date=1984-05-05 |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/1984/05/05/true-colors/eab12589-e4d2-473e-a8e7-f6cbcdabc05e/ |access-date=2022-04-04 |quote=This was [Sprouse's] second collection....: miniskirts, cutout dresses, tunics, tights, all in neon colors. Shades of the 1960s, Mary Quant, Courrèges, Biba, Youthquake and the Mods....Sprouse also revived silver lamé in a salute to the space age...}} Some of his microminis were in patent leather.{{cite journal |editor1-last=Finley |editor1-first=Ruth |editor-link=Ruth Finley |title=New York's Contemporaries: Bold, Bare & Unabashed |journal=Fashion International |date=1988-01-01 |volume=XVI |issue=4 |page=3 |location=New York, NY, USA |quote=Stephen Sprouse...cuts his micro mini at 11" in black, pink or baby blue patent leather.}} Unlike in the sixties, he showed these clothes with eighties shoe shapes like high-heeled pumps and Doc Martens.{{cite journal |last1=Schiro |first1=Anne-Marie |title=Sprouse: A 60's Spirit in Classic Mode |journal=The New York Times |date=1988-04-19 |page=B7 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1988/04/19/style/sprouse-a-60-s-spirit-in-classic-mode.html?searchResultPosition=17 |quote=...[S]hoes were stiletto-heeled pointy-toed pumps...}}

A style that would be seen off and on throughout the decade but would become common in the second half of the eighties was the tight, stretch minidress worn with high-heeled eighties pumps and often padded shoulders.{{cite journal |last1=Morris |first1=Bernadine |title=All Eyes Turn to Perry Ellis |journal=The New York Times |date=1981-04-22 |page=C14 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1981/04/22/garden/all-eves-turn-to-perry-ellis.html |access-date=2022-04-04 |quote=...Giorgio Sant'Angelo...is...making skin-tight dresses of stretch fabrics...}}{{cite book |last1=Feldkamp |first1=Phyllis |title=1989 Collier's Year Book Covering the Year 1988 |publisher=MacMillan Educational Company |page=241 |chapter=Fashion |quote=To balance the leggy look, shoulders were noticeably widened and heightened with padding. Many of the new dresses...were so minimal that they afforded little coverage, particularly the...sheath styles made of stretch fabric.}}{{cite book |last1=Sweetinburgh |first1=Thelma |title=1989 Britannica Book of the Year: Events of 1988 |publisher=Encyclopaedia Britannica, Ind. |isbn=0-85229-504-9 |page=200 |chapter=Fashion and Dress |date=1989 |quote=The bold minidress stole the show for the summer street look in Europe. The snug-fitting, black cotton stretch jersey sheath accentuated every curve as well as unwelcome bulges....The extra-tight black mini...was worn with...stiletto-heel black pumps.}} In silhouette, this was sort of an abbreviated, less heavily constructed version of 1950s sheath skirts.{{cite journal |last1=Cunningham |first1=Bill |title=Fashionating Rhythm |journal=Details |date=1988-03-01 |volume=VI |issue=8 |page=150 |publisher=Details Publishing Corp. |location=New York, NY |issn=0740-4921 |quote=[two mini-length Marc Jacobs sheath dresses in gingham, one strapless with a button-front placket, worn with a mini-length, shoulder-padded coat and high-heeled pumps, and the other with a broad portrait neckline and short sleeves, both very 1950s-looking except for the length.]}}{{cite journal |last1=Cunningham |first1=Bill |title=To the Future Through the Past |journal=Details |date=1989-09-01 |volume=VIII |issue=3 |pages=296 |publisher=Details Publishing Corp. |location=New York, NY |issn=0740-4921 |quote=...Giorgio di Sant'Angelo['s]...dresses were all seductively draped in gossamer fabrics. [Pictured is a lower-thigh-length sheath dress tightly draped in what looks like chiffon after the manner of 1950s Grès, on a curvaceous, athletic, and buxom model.]}} These forms of tight, blatantly seductive 1980s minis were shown on bodies that were voluptuous and/or muscular instead of thin and child-like as in the sixties.{{cite journal |title=The New Fuller Figure |journal=The New York Times |date=1986-12-07 |page=113 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1986/12/07/magazine/fashion-view-the-new-fuller-figure.html |access-date=2022-05-28 |quote=In the 1960s, a young, stick-thin, waif-like but charming English model named Twiggy summed up high style....[N]ow that curves count, Paulina [Porizkova] - with her generous bosom, small waist and curving hips - constitutes a stunning example of the current ideal. Paulina and several of her curvaceous colleagues - Elle MacPherson and Anna Jonsson, to name but two - are stars of the shows for...top...designers...The pulchritudinous model has also come to dominate the pages of fashion magazines...Vogue has put a stamp of high-style approval on the curvily contoured woman....From exercising, working out at gyms, jogging and the like, women's bodies have filled out...}}{{cite journal |last1=Morris |first1=Bernadine |title=French Dominate Fall Fashion |journal=The New York Times |date=1987-03-31 |page=B7 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1987/03/31/style/french-dominate-fall-fashion.html?searchResultPosition=12 |quote=The new clothes are shapely, body-revealing and seductive....This is not a rerun of the mini look of the 1960's...These are serious clothes that look fresh, new and marvelously attractive on the tall models with racehorse bodies....The new, sultry clothes are, in fact, a combination of the curvy look of the 1950's, when women relied on corsets and boned bras to help them achieve the fashionable hourglass shape, and the miniskirts of the 1960's...}}{{cite journal |last1=Gross |first1=Michael |title=Notes on Fashion |journal=The New York Times |date=1985-11-12 |page=A32 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1985/11/12/style/notes-on-fashion.html |access-date=2022-06-22 |quote=Perry Ellis gave the fashion crowd a jolt with an uncharacteristically close-fitting men's and women's collection shown with sizzle by such models as athletic Jeff Aquilon, lithe Lise Ryall, [and] Elle Macpherson, who is so fit she seemed to leap out of everything she wore...}}{{cite journal |editor1-last=Tilberis |editor1-first=Elizabeth |title=Vogue 1980-1989 |journal=Vogue 75 Years |date=1991 |pages=141–142 |publisher=The Condé Nast Publications Ltd. |location=London, England |quote=...the new curvy figure in Patrick Kelly's sequined stretch, 1988. [a skin-tight, silver-sequined, strapless mini sheath-dress to the upper thigh with a bustier bodice, worn with high-heeled silver pumps]...Emanuel's mini-sheath and cartwheel. [a strapless, shirred, mid-thigh-length white sheath dress with a fifties-looking bodice and net-covered black cartwheel hat with matching gloves]}} When these stretch minidresses were paired with sixties-style makeup and accessories, it was a lesson in the differences between sixties minis and eighties minis.{{cite book |last1=Howell |first1=Georgina |title=In Vogue: 75 Years of Style |date=1991 |publisher=Random Century Ltd. |location=London, England |isbn=0-7126-4791-0 |page=230 |chapter=The Aggressive Eighties: 1980-1991 |quote=By 1990 miniskirts, false eyelashes and white lipstick turned the stretch look into a parody of the sixties.}}

In the mid-1980s, Azzedine Alaïa began presenting mini and micromini versions of his extremely tight dress designs,{{cite news |last1=Hyde |first1=Nina S. |author-link=Nina Hyde |title=Alaia, Paris |newspaper=The Washington Post |date=1985-09-06 |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/1985/09/06/alaia-paris/c0e96ae6-23d7-470e-9797-c592b3b2517c/ |access-date=2022-06-22 |quote=...[B]est of all were his signature wool jerseys, from the knee to micro-mini.}}{{cite journal |last1=Gross |first1=Michael |title=Embattled Alaia Unveils a New Look |journal=The New York Times |date=1986-10-24 |page=A22 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1986/10/24/style/embattled-alaia-unveils-a-soft-new-look.html |access-date=2022-04-04 |quote=Alaia's...[s]kirt lengths are shorter than ever, so short in fact that many women may want to lengthen them.}}{{cite journal |last1=Schiro |first1=Anne-Marie |title=Notes on Fashion |journal=The New York Times |date=1985-05-21 |page=A24 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1985/05/21/style/notes-on-fashions.html |access-date=2022-06-22 |quote=...[T]he Palladium opened on 14th Street...[T]he Azzedine Alaia uniforms for the...waitresses...have black jersey minidresses with tank tops...}} his anatomical seaming and occasional sheer fabrics creating a prurient effect that would never have been seen in sixties miniskirts.{{cite journal |last1=Cunningham |first1=Bill |title=The Collections Spring Forward |journal=Details |date=1987-03-01 |volume=V |issue=8 |page=110 |publisher=Details Publishing Corp. |location=New York, NY |issn=0740-4921 |quote=...[W]ith [Alaïa's] revival of the miniskirt, stretch slips and dresses that follow and define the wearer's torso with structural welt seaming – he pushes ideas beyond the accepted.}}{{cite journal |last1=Cunningham |first1=Bill |title=Designers of the World, Unite! |journal=Details |date=1989-03-01 |volume=VII |issue=9 |pages=258–250 |publisher=Details Publishing Corp. |location=New York, NY |issn=0740-4921 |quote=There is no sluggish sensuality from Azzedine Alaïa, whose designs reveal the wearer's every cleft and curve. [Four mini-length dresses are shown: 1. a mid-thigh-length black stretch sheath dress of partly-transparent fabric so thin that it looks like pantyhose nylon, worn with chunky, early-fifties-looking high heels; 2 and 3. Two white pearl-beaded dresses, one a very minimal two-piece of micromini length, the other a slightly loose but openwork one to the top of the thigh; 4. a tightly belted, light-colored stretch dress to mid-thigh with a back bared by an intriguing cutout, again in fabric so thin that it almost looks like the model has nothing on.]}} His miniskirts, though, also included some that resembled flippy skating skirts{{cite book |last1=Mulvagh |first1=Jane |title=Vogue History of 20th Century Fashion |date=1988 |publisher=Viking, the Penguin Group |location=London, England |isbn=0-670-80172-0 |page=399 |chapter=1986 |quote=...Alaïa...presented rippling little skating skirts...}} and others that were grass-like raffia so short they barely covered the wearer.{{cite journal |last1=Cunningham |first1=Bill |title=Designers of the World, Unite! |journal=Details |date=1989-03-01 |volume=VII |issue=9 |page=279 |publisher=Details Publishing Corp. |location=New York, NY |issn=0740-4921 |quote=[an Alaïa dress with a sheer, fitted, sleeveless bodice, possibly of white stretch chiffon, that drops to a raffia hipster micromini]}} His earlier fitted, curve-accenting skirts, usually in a just-above-the-knee length that sometimes rose to the lower thigh,{{cite journal |last1=Schiro |first1=Anne-Marie |title=Azzedine Alaïa: New Sophistication |journal=The New York Times |date=1985-04-07 |page=34 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1985/04/07/style/azzedine-alaia-new-sophistication.html |access-date=2021-12-01 |quote=What they saw were...miniskirts...Mr. Alaïa is...known for...cutting his jackets and skirts to provide curves on even the most angular bodies.}} would be very influential in the second half of the decade, spawning imitations by companies like North Beach Leather{{cite journal |last1=Theis |first1=Tammy |title=The Leather Look |journal=The Dallas Morning News |date=1986-11-08 |url=https://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/fl-xpm-1986-11-09-8603090266-story.html |access-date=2022-05-23 |quote=Body consciousness also reigns supreme as the theme at North Beach Leather, where designer Michael Hoban['s]...strong-shouldered jackets with curvy zippers, paired with matching, thigh-hugging skirts, have their share of sexy appeal.}} and Body Glove.

During the mid- to late eighties, Patrick Kelly put his own whimsical signature on the familiar, high-heel-accompanied, tight, stretch minidresses of the decade,{{cite journal |last1=Morris |first1=Bernadine |title=Viewpoints: 3 Fashion Capitals |journal=The New York Times |date=1986-10-28 |page=B20 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1986/10/28/style/viewpoints-3-fashion-capitals.html |access-date=2022-06-22 |quote=...Jean-Paul Gaultier and Patrick Kelly...were making skin-tight clothes out of stretchy swimsuit fabrics that left absolutely nothing to the imagination.}} covering them with bright buttons, bright bowties, cartoon faces, etc.{{cite journal |last1=Cunningham |first1=Bill |title=Designers of the World, Unite! |journal=Details |date=1989-03-01 |volume=VII |issue=9 |page=260 |publisher=Details Publishing Corp. |location=New York, NY |issn=0740-4921 |quote=Patrick Kelly's...basic stretch body dresses...are embellished with unexpected decorations like the happy self-portrait pinned to a little black dress...a roll of the dice, a galaxy of silver stars or a dinner suit printed with jazzy notes.}}

For fall of 1987 and spring of '88, designers united in presenting a great proportion of miniskirts in almost all collections,{{cite journal |last1=Morris |first1=Bernadine |title=Women are Stealing a March on Short Skirts |journal=The New York Times |date=1987-04-25 |page=1 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1987/04/25/style/women-are-stealing-a-march-on-short-skirts.html |access-date=2022-04-04 |quote=In a rare display of unanimity, designers in the world's leading fashion centers here and in Europe focused on short skirts in their recent showings of collections for fall. Most of them, deciding to forget about 'choices' and 'options' - catchwords for the last few years - showed hemlines that bared the knee in most cases and frequently half the thigh as well.}}{{cite news |last1=Hyde |first1=Nina |author-link=Nina Hyde |title=In Short, Milan! |newspaper=The Washington Post |date=1987-10-06 |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/1987/10/06/in-short-milan/7dc798a5-36e8-49d2-8316-a5b9e92dfe24/ |access-date=2022-04-04 |quote=Those who hoped designers had gotten over short skirts by now better think again. Here in Milan, where Round 1 of the spring fashion shows began Sunday, skirts are, if anything, getting shorter....Short skirts are mainstream.}} with very few mainstream designers bucking the trend.{{cite news |last1=Luther |first1=Marylou |title=Paris When It Dazzles |newspaper=The Washington Post |date=1987-08-01 |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/1987/08/01/paris-when-it-dazzles/4103e034-cb9d-483b-978a-64d3bbc24770/ |access-date=2022-04-04 |quote=The hemline hike is such an established fact of life in the couture this season [1987] that only two major designers – Pierre Cardin and Yves Saint Laurent – bothered to show any daytime skirts below the knees.}}{{cite journal |last1=Gross |first1=Michael |title=Retailers Rush to the Miniskirt |journal=The New York Times |date=1987-06-14 |page=13 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1987/06/14/business/retailers-rush-to-the-miniskirt.html |access-date=2022-04-04 |quote=Diehards who want no part of the mini tidal wave can turn to Giorgio Armani, the only major designer in any country who continued to show sweeping hemlines for fall.}}{{cite news |last1=Hyde |first1=Nina |author-link=Nina Hyde |title=In Short, Milan! |newspaper=The Washington Post |date=1987-10-06 |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/1987/10/06/in-short-milan/7dc798a5-36e8-49d2-8316-a5b9e92dfe24/ |access-date=2022-04-04 |quote=If you were looking for long skirts this week you would have to go to the showrooms of the fashion avant-garde....Long skirts are being shown primarily by designers such as Romeo Gigli and Dolce and Gabbana...}} Though a few designers showed these minis in somewhat sixties shapes with flat shoes or boots,{{cite journal |last1=Cunningham |first1=Bill |title=Follies to Futurism |journal=Details |date=1987-09-01 |volume=VI |issue=3 |page=125 |publisher=Details Publishing Corp. |location=New York, NY |issn=0740-4921 |quote=In New York, the retro is a road map of the Sixties...Bill Blass echoed Cardin and Oscar de la Renta was mesmerized by Balenciaga's grand couture....David Cameron modernized the drum majorette silhouette of the Sixties...}}{{cite journal |last1=Morris |first1=Bernadine |title=7th Avenue Forecast: Shorter and Shorts |journal=The New York Times |date=1987-11-03 |page=B7 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1987/11/03/style/7th-avenue-forecast-shorter-and-shorts.html?searchResultPosition=15 |quote=...[Carolyne Roehm's] basic style is a shift dress with the welt seaming and unmarked waistline of the Courreges style that typified the 1960's....very short indeed.}}{{cite news |last1=Hyde |first1=Nina |author-link=Nina Hyde |title=Bill Blass, Hemming It Up |newspaper=The Washington Post |date=1987-04-07 |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/1987/04/07/bill-blass-hemming-it-up/332c31ed-46ac-43f4-a6a4-0a8777a2edba/ |access-date=2022-05-23 |quote=Everything was worn with nearly opaque panty hose and mostly flats for day...}} most showed truncated versions of eighties suits and cocktail dresses{{cite journal |last1=Morris |first1=Bernadine |title=Women are Stealing a March on Short Skirts |journal=The New York Times |date=1987-04-25 |page=1 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1987/04/25/style/women-are-stealing-a-march-on-short-skirts.html |access-date=2022-04-04 |quote=The differences between the short clothes of the 1960s and the styles offered today are considerable....Today,...styles...have a more formal air. Suits and jackets, almost ignored in the 1960s, are in the forefront of fashion now. Clothes are more shapely, with waistlines generally marked and hiplines often rounded.}} with slightly narrower shoulders,{{cite journal |editor1-last=Finley |editor1-first=Ruth |editor-link=Ruth Finley |title=Paris Fall/Winter '87 – Short, Shapely and Feminine |journal=Fashion International |date=1987-05-01 |volume=XV |issue=8 |page=2 |location=New York, NY, USA |quote=Trends: Short, above the knee to mid-thigh...Shoulders, smaller, more natural...}}{{cite journal |last1=Morris |first1=Bernadine |title=French Dominate Fall Fashion |journal=The New York Times |date=1987-03-31 |page=B7 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1987/03/31/style/french-dominate-fall-fashion.html?searchResultPosition=12 |quote=Shoulders, in most cases, are not so broad and prominent as before; in many styles, they are natural.}} worn with high-heeled over-the-knee boots or high-heeled eighties pumps that looked like pumps from the late fifties/early sixties.{{cite book |last1=Elkins |first1=Ann M. |title=The Americana Annual 1988: An Encyclopedia of the Events of 1987 |publisher=Grolier Incorporated |isbn=0-7172-0219-4 |page=236 |chapter=Fashion |date=1988 |quote=...[T]he opaque or textured stocking, the high-heeled suede pump or the over-the-knee, often thigh-high boots...were highlighted by the shorter skirts.}}{{cite book |last1=Peake |first1=Andy |title=Made for Walking |date=2018 |publisher=Schiffer Fashion Press |location=Atglen, Pennsylvania |isbn=978-0-7643-5499-1 |page=136 |chapter=A Sharper Edge |quote=Donna Karan, Yves Saint Laurent, and Andrea Pfister all featured boots that went to midthigh.}}{{cite news |last1=Hyde |first1=Nina |author-link=Nina Hyde |title=The Short and the Short of It |newspaper=The Washington Post |date=1987-04-11 |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/1987/04/11/the-short-the-short-of-it/a8522d91-0164-4d65-bdd6-94119d82cfe5/ |access-date=2022-04-04 |quote=[Donna Karan's] shoes are mainly over-the-knee boots or heels.}} Dark hose were recommended for them.{{cite journal |last1=Morris |first1=Bernadine |title=Women are Stealing a March on Short Skirts |journal=The New York Times |date=1987-04-25 |page=1 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1987/04/25/style/women-are-stealing-a-march-on-short-skirts.html |access-date=2022-04-04 |quote=Most designers have endorsed opaque panty hose to avoid a look that is too leggy. In dark shades, these hose also offer some camouflage...}}{{cite journal |last1=Buck |first1=Genevieve |title=The Skinny on the Mini, with Dark Hose and...Legs Together |journal=The Chicago Tribune |date=1987-04-08 |url=https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-1987-04-08-8701260704-story.html |access-date=2022-05-23 |quote=Short skirts can look terrific with black or other dark, opaque hose or tights – black sheers when the clothes are very dressy.}} Many of the new minis were stretch-fit tight,{{cite journal |editor1-last=Finley |editor1-first=Ruth |editor-link=Ruth Finley |title=New York's Contemporaries – Bold, Bare and Unabashed |journal=Fashion International |date=1988-01-01 |volume=XVI |issue=4 |page=3 |location=New York, NY, USA |quote=...[T]he addition of stretch makes everything look new and move like never before. Natural fibers such as cotton, wool and silk are enhanced by Lycra...}} and some were very short,{{cite book |last1=Howell |first1=Georgina |title=In Vogue: 75 Years of Style |date=1991 |publisher=Random Century Ltd. |location=London, England |isbn=0-7126-4791-0 |page=230 |chapter=The Aggressive Eighties: 1980-1991 |quote=...[D]resses kept on shrinking until maximum Lycra s-t-r-e-t-c-h was achieved....[T]he hems of skirts crept up to jacket level.}}{{cite news |last1=Hyde |first1=Nina |author-link=Nina Hyde |title=Southern Exposures |newspaper=The Washington Post |date=1987-10-14 |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/1987/10/14/southern-exposures/2892ad33-58a6-4c04-bc0f-72d4b51dadd5/ |access-date=2022-06-22 |quote=Vivienne Westwood...showed bands of fabric not much wider than a belt, under which models wore knee-length jersey 'panties,' as she called them, that looked like bike shorts.}} with Ungaro's so brief they were likened to 1950s bathing suits.{{cite news |last1=Hyde |first1=Nina |author-link=Nina Hyde |title=The Index is Up on Short Hemlines |newspaper=The Washington Post |date=1987-10-21 |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/1987/10/21/the-index-is-up-on-short-hemlines/7f4383c3-e02a-494d-a21c-d24e5c1cab4d/ |access-date=2022-04-04 |quote=Some of Ungaro's dresses for evening were as short as bathing suits, barely covering the crotch. They were among the shortest dresses in Paris this season.}}{{cite journal |last1=Cunningham |first1=Bill |title=Fashionating Rhythm |journal=Details |date=1988-03-01 |volume=VI |issue=8 |pages=120, 154 |publisher=Details Publishing Corp. |location=New York, NY |issn=0740-4921 |quote=A new hybrid: Ungaro's bathing-suit dresses...draped and tied on a leotard base, have the brevity of a bathing suit....Emanuel Ungaro's masterly draping of a micromini evening dress (or is it a bathing suit?)...}} The fashion industry's miniskirt campaign was so intense that newspaper articles appeared on women considering plastic surgery on their knees to suit the new lengths.{{cite news |last1=Liner |first1=Elaine |title=Knee Sculpting, in the Name of Fashion |newspaper=The Washington Post |date=1987-10-05 |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/1987/10/05/knee-sculpting-in-the-name-of-fashion/5ba5016c-b2e1-420a-874c-8aa4fab19aa3/ |access-date=2022-05-23 |quote=As hemlines go up, up, up, so are requests for special knee-shaping operations at the offices of cosmetic surgeons.}}

However, though there was a rush on miniskirts for a time,{{cite news |last1=Hyde |first1=Nina |author-link=Nina Hyde |title=Fashion Notes |newspaper=The Washington Post |date=1987-05-17 |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/1987/05/17/fashion-notes/5671a5ae-45ea-4da4-8671-941aebb3bc90/ |access-date=2022-04-04 |quote=In London the mini is everywhere, and in Paris it is a faît accompli. In New York the mini is an increasingly popular style.}}{{cite journal |last1=Gross |first1=Michael |title=Retailers Rush to the Miniskirt |journal=The New York Times |date=1987-06-14 |page=13 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1987/06/14/business/retailers-rush-to-the-miniskirt.html |access-date=2022-04-04}}{{cite news |last1=Hyde |first1=Nina |author-link=Nina Hyde |title=In Short, Milan! |newspaper=The Washington Post |date=1987-10-06 |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/1987/10/06/in-short-milan/7dc798a5-36e8-49d2-8316-a5b9e92dfe24/ |access-date=2022-04-04 |quote=Many Milanese women are wearing above-the-knee-length skirts. While some of the young wear them scarcely longer than a bandage, mothers and daughters, often walking together, show hems an inch or two above the knee...}} the unanimity around mini lengths did not last long,{{cite news |last1=Suplee |first1=Curt |title=Looking at the Body Politic |newspaper=The Washington Post |date=1988-04-10 |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/opinions/1988/04/10/looking-at-the-body-politic/eaab61a1-126b-4210-b784-815cc0c4d14c/ |access-date=2022-05-23 |quote=The body politic has spoken: The mini-skirt is officially dead. Despite a year-long siege by hemline hoisters, the female American thigh remains fully upholstered.}}{{cite book |last1=Morris |first1=Bernadine |title=The 1989 World Book Year Book: Events of 1988 |publisher=World Book, Inc. |isbn=0-7166-0489-2 |page=303 |chapter=Fashion |date=1989 |quote=...[T]he resistance to the miniskirt among working women caused a reaction in the fashion industry in 1988.}} as women continued to consider minis just one option among the many available during the decade and did not replace their entire wardrobes with them as they had in the sixties. This 1987-88 miniskirt push, though, would help cement the mini's status as a basic item in the average woman's wardrobe for many years to come.

From the 1980s, many women began to incorporate the miniskirt into their business attire,{{cite journal |last1=Gross |first1=Michael |title=Are Short Skirts At Home at Work? |journal=The New York Times |date=1987-07-17 |page=B6 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1987/07/17/style/are-short-skirts-at-home-at-work.html |access-date=2022-04-04}}{{cite news |last1=Hyde |first1=Nina |author-link=Nina Hyde |title=Ahem! Are Short Skirts Fit for the Office? |newspaper=The Washington Post |date=1987-05-23 |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/1987/05/23/ahem-are-short-skirts-fit-for-the-office-designers-say-yes-but-the-public-seems-divided/91efb829-6392-437d-afaf-21ad70de2fee/ |access-date=2022-04-04}} a trend which grew during the remainder of the century. The titular character of the 1990s television program Ally McBeal, a lawyer portrayed by Calista Flockhart, has been credited with popularising micro-skirts.{{cite news|last1=Standring|first1=Chris|title=Top Trends: Spring's long skirts flatter every body|url=https://edmontonjournal.com/trends+spring+long+skirts+flatter+every+body/10787269/story.html|access-date=20 October 2015|work=Edmonton Journal|agency=Postmedia Network Inc.|date=2 March 2015|archive-date=19 September 2015|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150919235025/http://www.edmontonjournal.com/Trends+Spring+long+skirts+flatter+every+body/10787269/story.html|url-status=dead}}

{{multiple image |

|width1 = 100|image1 = Microskirt (Karmen Pedaru at Anna Sui crop).png |caption1 = Anna Sui microskirt with matching underwear, 2011

|width2 = 102 |image2 = JapaneseSchoolGirl-Sobuline-2011.jpg |caption2 = Japanese kogal schoolgirl including short skirt }}

The very short skirt is an element of Japanese school uniform, which since the 1990s has been exploited by young women who are part of the kogal (or gyaru) subculture as part of their look.{{cite news|last1=Parry|first1=Richard Lloyd|title=Japan's schoolgirls set the trend|url=https://www.independent.co.uk/news/japans-schoolgirls-set-the-trend-1295844.html |archive-url=https://ghostarchive.org/archive/20220515/https://www.independent.co.uk/news/japans-schoolgirls-set-the-trend-1295844.html |archive-date=15 May 2022 |url-access=subscription |url-status=live|access-date=26 October 2015|work=The Independent|date=22 October 2011}}{{cite book |last1=Miller |first1=Laura |editor1-last=Mathews |editor1-first=Gordon |editor2-last=White |editor2-first=Bruce |title=Japan's Changing Generations: Are Young People Creating a New Society? |date=2012 |publisher=Routledge |isbn=9781134353897 |pages=87–88 |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Y4K2D1O5tkQC&pg=PA87|chapter=Youth fashion and beautification}}

In the early 2000s, micro-minis were once again revived. In 2003, Tom Ford, at that time described as one of the few designers able to effortlessly dictate changes in fashion, stated that micro-skirts would be the height of fashion for Spring/Summer 2003.{{cite web|last1=Staff writer|title=Gucci Spring/Summer 2003 Ready-To-Wear|url=http://www.vogue.co.uk/fashion/spring-summer-2003/ready-to-wear/gucci/catwalk-report|website=Vogue|publisher=Condé Nast|access-date=20 October 2015|date=29 September 2002|url-status = dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20151127044600/http://www.vogue.co.uk/fashion/spring-summer-2003/ready-to-wear/gucci/catwalk-report|archive-date=27 November 2015}} For fashionable wear, early 21st century microskirts were often worn with leggings or tights in order to avoid revealing too much.

File:LG 시네마 3D TV 새 모델 ‘소녀시대’ 영입.jpg in various styles of mini- and micro-mini dresses. South Korea, 2012.]]

A BBC article in 2014 wrote that miniskirts remained as contemporary a garment as ever, retaining their associations with youth. In an early 2010s study the department store Debenhams found that women continued buying miniskirts up to the age of 40, whilst 1983 studies showed that 33 years old was when the average woman had stopped buying them. Debenhams' report concluded that by the 2020s, miniskirts would be seen as a wardrobe staple for British women in their 40s and early 50s.

Despite this, in the early 21st century, miniskirts are still seen as controversial, and remain subject to bans and regulation. Valerie Steele told the BBC in 2014 that even though miniskirts no longer had the power to shock in most Western cultures, she would hesitate to wear one in most parts of the world. She described the garment as symbolic of looking forward to future freedom and backwards to a "much more restricted past" and noted that international rises in extreme conservatism and religious fundamentalism had led to an anti-women backlash, some of which was shown through censure and criticism of women wearing "immodest" clothing. In 2010, the mayor of Castellammare di Stabia in Italy ordered that police fine women for wearing "very short" miniskirts.{{cite news |last1=Jones |first1=Sam |last2=Kington |first2=Tom |title=Italian mayor seeks ban on miniskirts that reveal too much |url=https://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/oct/25/italy-mayor-miniskirts-ban|access-date=9 June 2016 |work=The Guardian |date=25 October 2010}} In the 2000s, a ban on miniskirts at a teacher's college in Kemerovo was claimed by lawyers to be against the terms of equality and human rights as laid out by the Russian constitution, whilst in Chile, the women's minister, Carolina Schmidt, described a regional governor's ban on public employees wearing minis and strapless tops as "absolute nonsense" and challenged their right to regulate other people's clothing. In July 2010, Southampton city council also tried to regulate their female employees's wardrobes, telling them to avoid miniskirts and dress "appropriately."

Miniskirts regularly appear in Africa as part of controversies, something that has continued since the 1960s.{{cite news |last1=Kiruga |first1=Morris |title=Understanding Africa's 'fashion gestapo': Miniskirts, maxi skirts make-up and long beards |url=http://m.mgafrica.com/article/2014-12-04-understanding-africas-fashion-police |access-date=10 June 2016 |work=Mail and Guardian Africa |date=5 December 2014 |archive-date=12 July 2016 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160712140345/http://m.mgafrica.com/article/2014-12-04-understanding-africas-fashion-police |url-status=dead }} In the early 21st century alone, instances have included a proposed ban on miniskirts in Uganda justified by claiming that they were a dangerous distraction to drivers and would cause road accidents, and in 2004, a leaflet campaign in Mombasa instructed women to dress modestly and "shun miniskirts", leading to the Kenyan government denying that they wanted a ban. Since the 1990s, women perceived to be "indecently dressed" might be stripped in public often by gangs of men, but sometimes by other women. These acts took place in Kenya, Zambia and elsewhere, including incidents in Johannesburg in 2008 and 2011 which led to similar attacks in various states including Sudan, Malawi, Zimbabwe and elsewhere. The President of Malawi, Bingu wa Mutharika, was forced to make a statement in 2012 after male gangs forcibly stripped women in Lilongwe and Mzuzu. By this point, "miniskirt protests" regularly followed these acts of violence, with the protesters defiantly wearing miniskirts. In late February 2010, a group of about 200 Ugandan women demonstrated against a so-called "miniskirt law", an anti-pornography legislation which specifically forbade women to dress "in a manner designed to sexually excite", or from wearing clothing that revealed their thighs and/or other body parts. Uganda revisited their proposed ban in 2013, with Simon Lokodo, Minister of Ethics and Integrity, proposing another anti-pornography bill which would outlaw revealing "intimate parts", defined as "anything above the knee", and vowing that women who wore miniskirts would be arrested.{{cite news|last1=Sevenzo|first1=Farai|title=Letter from Africa: Miniskirts and morals |url=https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-22375730|access-date=10 June 2016|work=BBC News|date=2 May 2013}} While most of these proposed bans come from male politicians, in 2009, Joice Mujuru, Zimbabwe's vice president, had to deal with rumours that she intended to ban miniskirts and trousers for women. In Africa, one of the main issues with the miniskirt since the 1960s is that it is seen as representative of protest against predominantly male authority, an accusation also applied to trousers for women which are perceived as blurring the gender divide.

The resurgence of controversial early 2000s trends, including visible thong strings and low-rise jeans, has extended to miniskirts, now seen on both fashion runways and social media platforms like TikTok.{{Cite web |title=The Secret to Wearing the Micro Miniskirt Trend Like a Grown-Up |date=6 January 2022 |url=https://www.harpersbazaar.com/fashion/trends/a38655834/micro-miniskirt-trend-2022/}}{{Cite web |title=Y2K fashion is back, thanks to Gen Zers – Here are some fashion trends we can't get over |url=https://www.news24.com/life/topstories/news/y2k-fashion-is-back-thanks-to-gen-zers-here-are-some-fashion-trends-we-cant-get-over-20240119}} The micro miniskirt trend has been associated with various fashion movements, from the mod style of the 1960s to the edgy looks of the 2000s. The skirts revival has evoked nostalgia for Y2K icons like Britney Spears and Paris Hilton, making it a piece for fashion enthusiasts seeking a contemporary edge with a nod to the past.{{Cite web |title=The Life Span of a Micro-Mini Trend How the Miu Miu miniskirt ended up on every fashion-magazine cover. |date=3 March 2022 |url=https://www.thecut.com/2022/03/how-the-miu-miu-mini-skirt-ended-up-everywhere.html}} With brands like Miu Miu and Miaou, the micro miniskirt has made its way back into one of the top fashion trends.{{Cite web |title=So How Is It Really? Wearing The Micro Mini Skirt Trend IRL |url=https://www.refinery29.com/en-us/2022/04/10926862/micro-mini-skirt-trend-review}} The micro mini made its emergence during Paris fashion week across catwalks and street style. Fashion brands like Khaite and Etro are capitalizing on the micro mini skirt trend, driven by customers' nostalgia and desire for a return to sexier styles.

During Spring/Summer 22, Miu Miu debuted their utilitarian take on the micro trend.{{Cite web |title=Trust Me: This Risky Skirt Trend Is About to Take Over in 2024 |date=13 May 2022 |url=https://www.whowhatwear.com/best-micro-mini-skirts}} It's a subversive and deconstructive take on the classic schoolgirl pleated skirt.{{Cite web |title=MIU MIU'S NEWEST TAKE ON THE VIRAL MICRO-MINI SKIRT IS HERE |date=4 October 2022 |url=https://fashionista.com/2022/10/miu-miu-spring-2023-review}} The skirt was immediately seen on Nicole Kidman, Paloma Elsesser, Zendaya, Lily Rose Depp, Bella Hadid, and many more, and went viral on TikTok and Instagram. The Miu Miu skirt set even has its own instagram account @miumiuset with 6K followers.{{Cite web |title=Miu Miu's viral micro miniskirt is dividing fashionistas |date=10 March 2022 |url=https://nypost.com/2022/03/10/miu-mius-viral-micro-miniskirt-is-dividing-fashionistas/}} With its low rise and extreme shortness, the miniskirt captures attention, reflecting Miuccia Prada's dedication to bold and unconventional fashion statements. The skirt is priced between $950 and $1,150.

The Diesel belt skirt debuted in Diesel's FW22 show in Milan, with leather belts transformed into micro-mini skirts.{{Cite web |title=DIESEL'S SKIRT ISN'T MADE MADE FOR SITTING, BUT SO WHAT? |date=2022-11-16 |url=https://www.highsnobiety.com/p/diesel-tiny-skirt-belt/ |author=Tom Barker |publisher=Highsnobiety }} The belt is another take on the current micro mini skirt trend referencing Paris Hilton's iconic quote "skirts should be the size of a belt".{{Cite web |title=Impractically iconic: HUNGER defends Diesel's belt-length mini skirt |date=8 November 2022 |url=https://hungermag.com/editorial/impractically-iconic-hunger-defends-diesels-belt-length-mini-skirt}} Inspired by the chunky, low-waisted belts of the 1990s, Diesel's creative director Glenn Martens envisioned a garment that exudes a nostalgic yet contemporary vibe.{{Cite web |title=Say Hello To Fashion's Other Cult Mini: The Diesel Belt Skirt |date=24 February 2022 |url=https://www.vogue.co.uk/fashion/article/diesel-aw22-mini-skirt}} A TikTok review by content creator Adrienne Reau, garnering 5.2 million views, has sparked controversy over the skirt design. The Daily Mail labeled it "'sloppy'," while Insider noted its impracticality, stating it's impossible to sit in. Diet Prada added humor, questioning if wearers are "ready to expose your buttcheeks to the breeze?"

Critics express concerns over its impracticality due to its extremely short length, while its predominantly showcasing on slender models has prompted calls for more size-inclusive offerings.{{Cite web |title=Is the Miu Miu Micro Miniskirt breaking society's dress codes? |date=8 February 2023 |url=https://www.lifestyleasia.com/hk/style/fashion/miu-miu-micro-miniskirt/}} Miu Miu's presentation of the skirt solely on slim young bodies further fueled these criticisms, although subsequent magazine covers featuring plus-sized model Paloma Elsesser and 54-year-old actress Nicole Kidman helped broaden its appeal to a wider audience. Model Jessica Blair highlighted in a TikTok video how clothing options for plus-size individuals were severely limited in the early 2000s, effectively excluding them from fashion. “Clothing options for plus-size people in the early 2000s were virtually non-existent, thereby completely excluding fat people from fashion,” Blair stated.{{Cite web|title=The Ultra-Mini Skirt is Back. But Where's the Body Inclusivity?|date=16 February 2022 |url=https://fashionmagazine.com/style/ultra-mini-skirt-body-inclusivity/}}

Woman in a red miniskirt and green cardigan crop.jpg|upright|Woman wearing a red miniskirt

Miniskirt3.jpg|

Miniskirt1.jpg|A woman in a jean-microskirt, {{circa}} 2006

1970sgirls.jpg|College girls, 1973 in Memphis.

Atam-models-1.JPG|2 models in miniskirts on the ATAM convention in Córdoba, Mexico in 2009.

Atam-models-2.JPG|Model at the ATAM convention in Córdoba, Veracruz, Mexico.

Minirock (Lack) Photo Model 1.jpg|Photomodel in a black leathered miniskirt at Landschaftspark Duisburg-Nord.

Miami-dolphins-040201-N-2541H-001.jpg|Members of the Miami Dolphins cheerleading team, {{circa}} 2004

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• {{cite book|last=Quant|first=Mary|author-link=Mary Quant|title=Quant by Quant|year=1996|publisher=Cassell|location=London}}

{{commons and category|Miniskirt|Miniskirts}}

• {{cite web |publisher= Victoria and Albert Museum |url= http://www.vam.ac.uk/page/0-9/1960s-fashion/ |title= 1960s Fashion Feature, including biographies, interviews, clothing and resources |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230330135243/https://www.vam.ac.uk/collections/1960s-fashion |archive-date=30 March 2023 }}

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