My Mini-Skirt Days : Sepia Saturday

This week's Sepia Saturday prompt photograph shows a pair of fish net clad legs, with a mini skirt well above the knees.   So it was time to take a look back at the 1960's and 70's - a time to hunt out my needle and thread to take up my skirts and follow the trend. 

In the UK, designer Mary Quant is usually credited with introducing the Mini-Skirt, and she was said to name the style after her favourite make of car - the Mini.   It came to symbolise the era of the "Swinging Sixties".

1965  - A family photograph before I set off for a year in the USA.  I am wearing a very staid pinafore dress, the length covering my knees. The Mini Skirt had yet to reach my fashion world.

1965  -  A favourite photograph with my father .  I am wearing a pencil skirt with knees just on show. 

1966 - Skirt lengths are rising  up the leg  here,  as I set out on  a long distance  Greyhound bus journey, across the USA.  I met another British girl and we travelled  across America on a brilliant ticket - 99 days of travel for 99 dollars. 

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1967 - Back home in Edinburgh, and  even my mother is following the fashion  with shorter skirts. 

1969 - Hemlines are climbing upwards.  My  first  job after Library School was as an Information Officer in a small organization in Edinburgh.  For  some reason the four girls on the staff opted to dress up for an evening reception, rather than go for the professional look.  No knees on show in the photograph, but look at the length of those skirts!  This time my choice  was a turquoise pinafore dress worn with a frilly collared blouse.  Vanity had won the day, as I had by now forsaken my glasses for contact lenses.

1970 - and can't you tell from our outfit  colours!   I am in the orange  and brown which seemed to characteristic the decade and my mother equally vibrant in royal blue and shocking  pink.  I had been to the hairdresser's to achieve that bouffant hairstyle. 

1971 - I have shown this photograph before on my blog, but it is such a natural  one for the prompt,  I had to include it here.  I am wearing a blouse  with a peter pan collar, a very short skirt (despite the winter weather), and  the jazzy striped coat - perched on my (to be) husband's car.

1971 -  Hemline rising even more!   I thought he was very brave and trusting to let me behind the wheel of his car, given I had hardly driven,  since passing my test a few years previously.

 

1971 - A visit to Inverary on the west coast of Scotland,  with the castle in the background. Back to my pinafore dress style,  but a lot shorter than in the first photograph here. 

 1971 - Honeymooners at Stonehenge  - I wish I was as slim now!

 

 1973 - A mother by this stage, but no lengthening of my skirts. Taken in the hot house of the Royal Botanic Gardens in Edinburgth.

c.1980 - sitting on North Pier, Blackpool (my ancestral home)  with its famous Tower in the background.   I reckon this was taken in the October half term holiday,  when we went down to visit relations.  I am wearing my best winter coat,  and how styles have changed, as today I wouldn't dream of wearing something so dressy  for windswept Blackpool - much more casual clothes would be my choice - trousers and a hooded jacket.  

 1977 - I will end with a mother and daughter alike pose - same colour outfits, four knees on show.   

We were soon to move fashion wise  into the midi and the maxi and  the hippy look - long flowing skirts - not my style at all.  But  for a brief period,   and at  the only time of my life,  I was on trend  with my minis.    But fish  net stockings never made an appearance!

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Sepia Saturday gives an opportunity for genealogy bloggers 

       to share their family history

by featuring each week a photographic prompt 

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