MINI WEEK: 2 MINI SKIRTS

While the bikini liberated beach goers in the late 1940s and early 1950s ( the bikini was named after the atomic bomb testing site, by the way), the mini skirt brought youthful daring and sexuality to everyday fashion in the 1960s. As the song said, "in olden days, a glimpse of stockings was looked on as something shocking." Hem lines traveled higher and lower, but the mini skirt took things to the outer limits. As street wear, it forced the old and new generations to confront qualities that Mary Quant used to describe her Mini car yesterday: "optimistic, exuberant, young, and flirty." How did people react in the mid-1960s? Responses were similar to bikini wearers in the 1940s and to Bardot for popularizing the two-piece in the early 1950s, some interest aroused along with a large dose of conservative outrage. Here's a clip with "man on the street" style interviews.