Mini Skirts

Did you wear one in the 60's if you were a young girl? And if you were a young man then, did you look at all those legs?

I wore the mini skirts like most young girls in 1968 until 1972. But I did not wear them more than 8 inches above the knee. Quite conservative to the younger generation and yet quite daring to the older generation.

I did not dare to wear the hotpants though. Probably I had lots of Taiwanese singers in Sibu to compare with. They did not look too good in them. So I decided not to have any at all. However today, with all the girl bands, etc on tv, I find them fairly palatable. Better than some of the other styles.

the very short skirt actually came from Britain in 1967. while most people were still wearing the 1950's clothes in the very conservative Sibu, and the cheong sam and sam foo were still being worn by the married women, more and more young ladies took the the street with the interesting and attractive mini skirts by the late 60's. The movie stars, the Taiwanese singers and better economic conditions caused by good timber money helped propelled Mary Quant's style in Sibu.

According to fashion history,the fore runner of the mini dress the straight shift, which had developed from the 1957 sack dress, was still well below the knee.

In the early sixties, pleated skirts set on a hip yoke basque were worn with short sleeved over blouses which were cut not unlike the shell tops of today. Straight skirts had front and back inverted pleats called kick pleats and were ideal for doing the twist dance craze as they allowed the knee to move freely. Remember Chubby Checker? Boys and girls were crazy about the twist. They were twisting and shouting on Saturday nights in the Sibu Recreation Club.

In the United States, with movies like Gidget and Summer Holidays, pop stars wore straight sweater dresses in lambswool or the synthetic acrylic variety called Orlon worn belted with waists nipped in became fashionable. Sandra Dee, Yvette were the darlings of the cinemas. Every girl dreamed of a holiday by the sea. Bobby Darin was causing every girl to swoon. And I had pictures of Cliff Richard and Elvis Presley in my scrap book . All these new behaviours caused a great deal of headaches and heartaches to my mother and many other mothers who thought that they should have sent their daughters to Chinese school where girls wore pigtails and white and black skirts only.

Sweaters were the in thing and we all wished for a twin set. Singapore was the centre of fashion and every fairly wealthy Sarawak family bought some of these gorgeous sweaters in Change Alley or other shops .Pencil skirts were still worn with sweaters .

those were giddy days for the post war babes like us. And it was a good time. Bob Dylan, Slim Whitman, and other crooners sang, "Times, they are a'changin...."

And true enough, with changes in media, communication, magazines,radio and tv....times changed very quickly...we were all trying to catch up with everything on a gallop.