For my first attempt towards the project, I wanted to research about the freedom of dress, the female body and sexuality relating to current issues of slut shaming, catcalling and sexual harassment in a patriarchal society. For protest, I wanted to look at the judgmental and denigrating attitudes towards how women dress and how much skin she shows, and the supposedly transgression of society’s established and normalized ideas, codes of dress and sexual conduct.

One moment if history that could not be forgotten was the introduction of the mini skirt in the 60s by designers such as Andre Courreges, Paco Rabanne, and, most importantly, Mary Quant who, influenced by the mood of the era, the sexual revolution and the socio-cultural phenomena happening at the time, aimed to respond to the new generation of independent-minded consumers and to women’s aspirations by reflecting the emerging new attitudes of young people into her designs. In an interview for The Guardian in 1967, she stated ‘‘fashion doesn’t really influence the climate of opinion; it reflects what is really in the air. It reflects what people are reading and thinking and listening to, and architecture, painting, attitudes to success and to society’’. The miniskirt marked the end of the era of conformity and a positive breakthrough for youth power and womens liberation. The miniskirt began to evoke powerful political and cultural sentiments when it became associated with feminism; it became a potent symbol of the youth movement and women emancipation due to its anti-establishment demeanor and celebration of the female form and exposure of skin, which was mostly associated with free will and sexual liberation, inscribing power over the female body. Alexander Plunket Greene, Mary Quant’s partner, told Rolling Stone in 1987 that ‘people were very shocked by the clothes, which seem so demure and simple now. At the time they seemed outrageous’. Many people, especially the older generation, were against the miniskirt and so there were many protests from young people that defended it.