Lumpy-Legged Schoolgirls Spoil Mini-Skirt Vogue

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31162, 12 September 1966, Page 2

Lumpy-Legged Schoolgirls Spoil Mini-Skirt Vogue

“The Press” Special Service

AUCKLAND, September 11.

Lumpy-legged schoolgirls are likely to stop mini-skirts becoming in New Zealand more than a craze for teen-agers and the way-out early twenties group.

Fashion observers at Auckland yesterday agreed that the mass adoption of the really short mini-skirts by the 14 to 16-year-olds had discouraged most older girls from wearing them.

“They are giving mini-skirts a bad reputation because of their bad legs and because they are too young They are spoiling the mini-skirt image for people who would otherwise wear them,” said the male editor of a garment news magazine. “Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem to occur to them that the style might not suit them,” said the manageress of a boutique specialising in mod. clothes. “They don’t stop to think about their figure or their legs. But the young girls are still snapping up these skirts, some of them only 18 inches from waist to hem.” A lunchtime stroll along Queen street with eyes directed at knee level quickly demonstrates that the youngest mini-skirt wearers tend to sport the most extreme examples. Back-to-school wear may seem a little tame to them. But perhaps a little unofficial hemlifting on school uniforms has been going on. Meanwhile smartly dressed girls in a slightly older age

group have almost uniformly accepted skirts a modest inch or two above the knee. Indications are that knees will be visible throughout the coming summer and probably for some time beyond, for most girls, even if they do not accept the fully abreviated fashions, say they are fully in favour of higher hemlines than had recently been fashionable. A visitor from Christchurch, Miss Shirley Harper, commented: “I think the shorter style is here to stay. I like it. It’s comfortable and should be nice and cool in summer." Whether men appreciate the style so much is open to question. Several Auckland men remarked that New Zealand girls did not have the most beautiful legs in the world and might do better to keep them hidden. None had solved the problem of just where to look when sitting on a sideways bus seat opposite a girl in a true mini-skirt.