Looking back: Mary Quant made many men very upset!

Trailblazer Mary epitomised the 60s, mostly being credited with the ‘invention’ of the mini skirt which seemed to pave the way to the emancipation of women, the pill, rock and roll and Women’s Lib.

After Bill Hayley had introduced the term ‘teenager’ for the first time when he was on a UK tour with his band The Comets in 1957, we actually had an identity and with that came change, not only in the music we listened to, but in the clothes we wore.

Clothes in the 50s were pretty conventional. As girls we wore three-tiered dirndl skirts with frou frou petticoats underneath. Straight shift dresses or skirts with pleats back and front.

The skirts were particularly useful when Chubby Checker brought the Twist out in 1960 and which enabled us to do the moves so much more easily.

With the skirts we would wear a twinset or cardigan buttoned up to the neck, but we wore it back to front with the buttons at the back.

We also wore blouses with a tie or ruffle, and sometimes a string of pearls. Of course skirts were well below the knee then, and women didn’t normally ever wear trousers.

When we went to dances, usually in the church hall, we went in our stiletto heeled shoes but carried our flat shoes for ‘bopping’ in a ‘train case’ which had a mirror inside the lid and also held our lipstick and Max Factor Crème Puff compact.

Excitingly, with the advent of the 60s, there were new, innovative fashions coming into the shops to include very daringly, Capri or Cigarette pants, to be followed by an explosion of the new miniskirts which got progressively shorter with each year.

In Sheffield, Peter Robinson was the place to shop. Opening in April 1962, it was formally Montague Burtons at the top of Angel Street and was bombed beyond recognition during the war. Now it had a ‘Top Shop Section’ where we could buy the latest trendy fashions and keep up with Carnaby Street and was also a trendy coffee shop.Even C & A Modes realised that it had to move on from its safe, elderly lady image and keep up with the times.

Although our mothers still stuck to the elegant department stores for which Sheffield was famous then, like John Walsh, Cockayne’s, Robert Brothers and Marshall and Snelgrove, we discovered shops like Chelsea Girl, Richards, Van Allen and Pippy’s, and eventually niche shops like ‘Lift Up Your Skirts and Fly’.

The men didn’t fare quite so well when it came to trendy fashion.

Jeans hadn’t quite taken off yet for casual wear courtesy of Bunney’s or Harringtons, and many young men still adopted the look made famous by Simon Templar in ‘The Saint’ buying suits from John Collier (The Window to Watch!)

Winston’s on Snig Hill was considered to be more affordable, selling an amazing selection of shirts with spear point or cutaway collars and slim jim ties. They would even give customers a cardboard replica of a hanky to put in the top pocket of a suit jacket!

It was also very sad for many men whose hearts were broken when they fondly remembered the sight of stocking tops, instead of the tights which were necessary to wear with new miniskirts.

I don’t think Mary Quant did them any favours!