Word: quante
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Unlike the short skirts of the 1960s, the new minis are not political or sexual proclamations. For many a dashing lass in that pioneering wave, the A-line mini was a kind of manifesto at the feminist barricades. The first cutoff skirts of Great Britain's Mary Quant, recalls Fashion Writer Suzy Menkes in the London Times, "were conceived as a rejection of everything that existing fashion stood for." They were also "an explicit sexual statement. Today's minis are far less predatory, and when they are worn over thick tights with leg warmers and big sweaters, they...
Those early minis were also something of a joke, of course. Some Quant creations consisted of less material than a Victorian hanky and-at eleven inches above the knee-barely covered the area once reserved for underwear. On the way up from the pert Chelsea shopgirl look, the ultrashort skirt was given the imprimatur of couture by Parisian Designer André Courrèges in the middle '60s. The mini's bon voyage across the Atlantic was largely the work of Enfant Terrible Rudi Gernreich, who was not only the first U.S. designer to bare the thigh...
...only right and logical combination to wear with the new fashion lengths." Leonard of London, who insists he invented it. is so happy with the Ape cut and so virtuoso at it that 75 top Japanese hair stylists flew in last week to study his techniques. Julie Christie, Mary Quant and the cast of Hair have all left theirs on English cutting-room floors. In Paris, the Duchess of Windsor, Mme. Herve Alphand and Claudia Cardinale have gone for Alexandre's version of the style; Elizabeth Taylor and Sophia Loren settled for Apelike wigs. Alba of Rome...
...beginning, Booker concedes, mod England made a pleasant enough dream, set to music by the Beatles and costumed by Mary Quant. It all seemed a carnival of wit and style. At moments the carnival even appeared to have direction. Plays like John Osborne's Look Back in Anger, novels like Kingsley Amis' Lucky Jim, revues like Beyond the Fringe seemed to be acts of ruddy good health against a moribund Establishment. Old England was dead. Long live new England...
...Designer Mary Quant introduces the miniskirt...