It wasn’t me or Courrèges who invented the miniskirt – it was the girls in the street who did it,” said Mary Quant of the revolutionary hemline she is widely credited with creating. The miniskirt was launched on King’s Road and immortalised in the Swinging Sixties, with Quant putting its success down to genetics: “The Chelsea girl had the best legs in the world. She had the courage to wear it.”
Despite it grabbing global press attention, not everyone was enamoured with the abbreviated skirt. Quant recalled how the stereotypical city gent, with his pinstriped suit and bowler hat, would beat Bazaar’s window with his brolly while shouting “Immoral!” and “Disgusting!”. Coco Chanel declared the miniskirt “indecent”. When Sophia Loren publicly claimed that the miniskirt had “destroyed the feminine mystique”, Quant replied: “Well, she’s built the other way up.”
