Will we all wear minis? Beyond the knees

Press, 2 December 1987, Page 17

Will we all wear minis? Beyond the knees

By.

KATHARINE WHITEHORN

Do you remember the mini? If you are over 40, you must; but if you do, you may be watching the rising hemline with an apprehension bordering on alarm. Are we supposed to wear it now, or not, or what? Of course, there are stalwarts who say that they never, ever will — there always are. And half the women of Britain will go on having an indeterminate hem-length which doesn’t relate to fashion any more than anything else they wear — though their family photos date just as much as a model girl’s. But hemlines only become a matter for argument about once a decade or so, and this is plainly one of the crunch moments. How did the over-40s cope last time? One or two tall ladies of a certain age did look a bit odd in some of the Mary Quants. American hemlines never got as short as the British, anyway, and the chic in the south of France did not go much above the knee.

Quite a few people took to wearing dressy trousers, which I expect we’ll see again; and for a long time there was another useful option in the “casual” skirt, tricky for carrying trays upstairs but warm and comforting all. the same.

But everyone did go shorter — they just didn’t get quite as crotch-high as the very young, the seams of whose knickers were frequently to be seen. Indeed, the medical profession reported that the young girls actually grew fatter in the thigh, an extra layer of subcu-

taneous fat being nature’s way of ensuring that the virtually skirtless kept up their body temperature. Wearing it did not depend on what shape you were. When a fashion is really universal it’s worn by those it doesn’t suit as wel as by those it does. During the Sixties, we had a series of stout teenage mother’s helps; it never even crossed their minds that having 44-inch hips was any reason not to wear a pale pink angora miniskirt. In one way they were right: if they’d been out of gear with their own age group, they wouldn’t have been seen as tasteful — simply as dowdy and weird. If the mini is really upon us again, anything long will soon begin to look subtly wrong. The question remains: are older women going to wear it? Sarah Mower (the “Observer’s” fashion writer) reports that senior American fashion experts sported it joyfully at the Milan collections.

But — it may be wish-

ful thinking — I’m inclined to think most over--408 won’t go the whole ham this time if they’re not in the fashion trade (and, of course, not sure they can pass for under--403) for two reasons.

First, dignified dressing of any sort can’t quite take an ultra-short skirt.

Grande dame dressing, which says “You may be young, but I am rich” does not aim to look like a leggy nymphet. I can’t see old money showing its old knees this time. For the social climate in which the short skirt is occurring is different. Fashion historian James Laver always insisted on a close link between fashion and events — immature unbosomy figures went with emancipation after the French Revolution, and in the 19205, and in the 19605; but there is not the kind of breakaway freedom in the air these days. In the Sixties, the pretence was that everyone was egalitarian, poor, carefree and — above all — young; and no-one more so than the British, ticked off by the “New York Times” for frivolling around in the face of national decline (it was us that had the budget deficit in those days).

It was not cool to be grand. As Spoerry, the man who built the fake fishing village of Port Grimaud when St Tropez was at its height, once put it: “East of the Estoril, they try and show the money they haven't got; west, they try and hide the money they have.” You might have had a 60-foot yacht, but on it you wore the faded denims of the youth culture.

There were stories — they didn’t have to be true — of posh girls going to elocution classes to acquire common accents; among even the richest students there was not a white tie or a ball gown to be seen.

But this carefully fostered illusion . that money didn’t matter was based on a scene where everybody had it, or thought they had. The Seventies stock market crash put paid to that. Students started worrying about getting jobs; the rich, in Thea Porter’s words, started wearing their diamonds again; the price of shares came down and the hemlines with it. Then it was delicious to listen to the long, modest maxis being denounced with all the passion that had applied to the lustinducing mini; for one of the major pleasures of fashion has always been listening to someone fulminating about how wicked it is. We can believe the short skirt is here to stay when we hear the thunderous denunciations begin, in the style of Ecclesiastes (vanity!) and John Knox and even Addison.

In his day, the skirts the clergy were deploring from every pulpit were preposterously enormous; he pictured a stern judge asking “My little Madam, were you the inhabitant of so great a garment?” My great Madam, are you going to be the inhabitant of so little a garment? Oh, surely not. I think. I hope. Well, we shall see.

-—Copyright London Observer Service.