‘The mini is back, ra-ra,’ announced the Observer Magazine of 15 August 1982. They’ve been back since, of course. Their most recent revival was in 2019, partly due to the V&A’s exhibition on Mary Quant, according to the Guardian – but this was their first return. That’s an early original John Bates on the cover (above, left), and a pink miniskirt (right), by Norma Kamali (£30) and pink leather shoes by Manolo Blahnik (£80).
‘In 1965, the mini had started its climb up the nation’s legs,’ wrote Sally Brampton. ‘Girls were flaunting skirts not much wider than belts strapped around their upper thighs, and dresses that were no more than the briefest of triangles.’
Expanding on this stark geometry, she continued: ‘The new fashion brutalism of the 60s turned women into androgynous creatures: tall, stick-like beings with lips silvered and frosted, set in dead white faces from which peered their great, dark-painted eyes.’
The 60s clothing had been a reflection of an affluent and permissive time just as the clothes of the 20s were, but ‘it was the 60s that marked the real youth revolution’.
The Observer Magazine cover stylists had urged the 60s model to ‘look awkward’, as she ‘stiffened into the marionette pose of a badly jointed doll’ so that they could achieve the desired contrast with the looser 80s look.
‘Once again the brief banners of youth flutter down every high street,’ said Brampton, ‘but their effect is tame, no longer a statement of rebellion.’ The ‘stiff futurism of the 60s’ had softened. ‘The new short skirts – called ra-ras after the garments worn by American cheerleaders – are cheerfully unassuming frills of fabric.’
Brampton reckoned that to those wearing ra-ras, 60s minis were museum pieces. But just as 60s minis were an expression of their time, so 80s ra-ra skirts were very much of theirs.
