The miniskirt in “Le Monde”, from object to be destroyed to political instrument

Mary Quant, who popularized the miniskirt in 1962, “revolutionized fashion, and breathed a wind of lightness into the female wardrobe”, wrote Maud Gabrielson in the obituary of the designer published in The world days after his death on April 13. A legend of fashion and the Swinging Sixties, she was hardly mentioned the first time the daily wrote the word ” mini skirt “, April 21, 1966.

In an astonishing lament published in the singular section “La femme, l’enfant”, Maurice Denuzière plays with this fashion for “knees in the wind” : “The patella, which for a long time seemed to be an anatomical boundary not to be crossed on pain of indecency, has finally been freed. » The great reporter who does not like knees or Claude Pompidou elegantly attacks his own: “It must be recognized that a beautiful knee is as rare as a beautiful skull, and the wife of our Prime Minister, photographed recently on the steps of the Elysée alongside Mme Gandhi in a long sari, with his short dress, would not have taken the NATO negotiations one step further if we had counted on this charming audacity to influence our allies. »

The daily’s journalists seem unanimous. “What the ‘miniskirt’ should be: a sports outfit that is completed with a jacket and stockings”, wrote Nathalie Mont-Servan on June 2, 1966 before triumphantly announcing a month later that “the miniskirt will only last one season”. However, in the months that followed, foreign correspondents observed the craze of young girls around the world for this tiny garment that panicked governments. In Tunisia, President Bourguiba, on the occasion of the anniversary of the decrees for the emancipation of women, declares “the war on jerk, mini-skirts, long hair, bare buttocks and all that devil fashion”, wrote Josette Ben Brahem on August 15, 1966.

On October 11 of the same year, it was the turn of Henri Pierre, correspondent in Moscow, to announce, in “one” of the Worldthat “Soviet model makers engage in the battle of the mini-gioup”. This strange spelling is explained by the fact that “the newspapers never use the Russian term ‘mini-oukba’ but always speak of ‘mini-gioup’, as if to better underline its foreign and exotic origin”. But the youth dreams of it. Stylists parade models “knees completely uncovered” and foreigners are asked at the exit of hotels “not cigarettes but the latest women’s magazines”.

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