There is a hoary economic adage that skirts get shorter as the economy flourishes, in which case we may be seeing, if not the green shoots of recovery, then the mottled thighs suggestive of some sort of rallying.
For not only was there a solid showing for the miniskirt index on the autumn/winter catwalks, but a survey by Debenhams has revealed that women are clinging on to their minis for longer. Where once they would take cover in demure knee-lengths during their early thirties, so now they are strutting their high-hemmed stuff until the age of 40.
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This may be all very well if one is a fortysomething in the guise of Demi "I haven't had surgery" Moore (46), but the rest of us may be feeling a slight frisson of terror as we catch autumn's first nip in the air.
'Twas ever thus. Renaissance beauties outraged their contemporaries in nipple-grazing frocks; Regency fashionistas competed for the flimsiest, most figure-hugging materials.
But the miniskirt was genuinely revolutionary. Flappers had gone short-skirted in the Twenties, but short only relative to their buttoned-up Edwardian forebears. The mini, as its name suggests, was the real deal.
We Brits can take some pride in this. For the mini was a street-up fashion phenomenon that issued from Mary Quant's King's Road emporium, Bazaar, and the more recherché Carnaby Street boutiques. As London started swinging, so hemlines veered upwards, and the world of high fashion followed suit.
It was the same period that Larkin identifies as being when sexual intercourse began, namely: "In nineteen sixty-three/ (which was rather late for me) –/ Between the end of the Chatterley ban/ And the Beatles' first LP."
This was fashion as mission creep. If skirts had ventured above the knee in 1961, they had reached the upper thighs by 1966.
The mini was seized upon as a symbol of liberation – social, sexual and sartorial – championed by feminists such as Germaine Greer and Gloria Steinem. However, where women thought "freedom", many men thought "fetishism", and the easy-access mini became a staple of pornography. Google "miniskirt" today and unsavoury material will crop up on the first page.
The fact that the mini originated as a teen style makes a good deal of this material more dubious still. Sixties' chicks may have been rebelling by not wanting to look like their mothers, but the association between the short skirt and youth threw up a good many less positive associations.
Its principal poster girls were just this, girls – Twiggy, The Shrimp – their very nicknames emphasising their gamine slenderness. Teens were the scene, but the aesthetic teetered toward the prepubescent with miniskirted baby-dolls, gymslips, and pinafores.
Appropriate, then, that in the back-to-school week, minds should be turning to the vexed question of whether one has to be of school age to sport a mini.
Of course, the idea that fashion dictates fixed wear-by dates went out with the ark, or, more specifically, the girdle. In this age of nutritional neuroticism and hot and cold running yoga, many women will feel fitter and more confident at 40 than they did at 20.
Moreover, in the wake of rule-book dressing, she may feel as liberated as her mother did first time around by the joie de vivre of the mini – not least, as she can now team it with state-of-the-art hosiery, leggings, jeans, thigh boots, or anything else she damn well pleases.
The trick is to cultivate a look that says insouciance rather than working girl. Thus, it is as well not to team a mini with show-stopping cleavage. It is also worth having an eye to Lucie Clayton-style deportment when scooping things off the floor. Other than this, the rallying cry should be that greatest of all fashion mantras: enjoy!
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