In any film about carefree young women shaking off the shackles of their grim (often northern) upbringing in order to savour the delights the big city had to offer, the miniskirt was an indispensable piece of costuming. A typical example is Smashing Time, a fondly remembered musical comedy romp of 1967 written by George Melly, in which all the characters are given names taken from Lewis Carroll’s nonsense poem Jabberwocky.

Starring Rita Tushingham and Lynn Redgrave, the film tells the story of two young northern women arriving in London to seek fame and fortune in the fashion world. One of them, Yvonne (Redgrave) becomes a model and singer, going on to live the full, miniskirted, Carnaby Street dream. Their paths diverge, but they learn eventually that united they stand, divided they fall.

In a sense, Redgrave was simply reprising the role she had played as the title character in Georgy Girl (1966), where she does her best to taste the Swinging Sixties lifestyle enjoyed by her hip roommate Meredith (Charlotte Rampling), while dodging the dodgy attentions of her father’s boss. The film’s tagline was "The wildest thing to hit the world since the miniskirt!".

A miniskirt was the quickest way to establish that a female character was sexually experienced. Interestingly, in the St Trinian’s films, a sequence of comedies about the staff and pupils of an anarchic girls’ school, many of the older girls, the sixth-formers, appear permanently dressed for seduction, in mushed hair, unbuttoned blouses and short school-uniform skirts. Blue Murder At St Trinian’s (1957) is the best example of this tendency, but note the date. The miniskirt had almost been invented here, many years before it was a twinkle in Mary Quant’s eye.

Before Stanley Kubrick was brought in to direct the controversial film of Anthony Burgess’s novel A Clockwork Orange (1971), one of the variations to the book that was under consideration was casting the central, murderous gang as bad girls in miniskirts.

The other side of the pond

In US cinema culture, the miniskirt is associated much more with a straightforwardly raunchy, borderline-porn ethos than it was in England. Films such as Miniskirt Love (1967) - "A shocking glimpse into the warped morals of the mod world" - and Miniskirt Heist (1975) are essentially soft-core titillation, a genre in which the miniskirt is emblematic shorthand for easy, indiscriminate sex.

Eve Of Destruction (1991) features a female robot, Eve VIII (Renee Soutendijk), which gets stuck in "battlefield mode', and embarks on a murderous rampage, starting as it means to go on by kitting itself out in a miniskirt and red leather jacket. Leaving a trail of mayhem, the robot destroys any men unwise enough to try to get off with it, as well as laying waste to the forces of law and order.

A miniskirt discography

Such an iconic fashion item has naturally been referenced countless times in popular music. Here is a short selection of tunes you might care to spin:

• Red Simpson: "Miniskirt Minnie" (1967). From the album Red Simpson Sings A Bakersfield Dozen. This song was also covered by the late soul legend Wilson Pickett as a single in 1969.
  
  
• Juan Esquivel: ‘Mini Skirt’ (1967). Esquivel was a Mexican bandleader, whose work has now found posthumous favour with the Loungecore generation. An arrangement of this song for string quartet appears on the Kronos Quartet’s 2002 album, Nuevo.
  
  
• Allen Sherman: ‘My Aunt Minnie (Bought A Miniskirt)’ (1967). A comedy lyric by the great musical parodist, whose best-known composition remains ‘Hello Mudduh Hello Fadduh’, this spin on the Swinging Sixties appears on Sherman’s album, Togetherness.
  
  

• John Lee Hooker: ‘Miniskirts’ (1968). Written for his album Tantalizing With The Blues, the lyric suggests the great bluesman finds the sight of miniskirted women rather disconcerting, which was very much a minority view among men at the time.
  
  
• Iveys: ‘Girl Next Door (In A Miniskirt)’ (1968). This song existed originally only as a track on a demo tape, now released for posterity as Someday We’ll Be Known. Iveys founder member Pete Ham went on to form the rock band Badfinger, and also co-wrote the Harry Nilsson hit ‘Without You’.
  
  

• Peter Thomas Sound-Orchester: ‘Multi-Kolored Miniskirts’. Featured on a 1999 compilation album Moonflowers And Mini-Skirts, this is a typical piece of Sixties movie scoring by the highly regarded German film composer, Peter Thomas.
  
  
• Cramps: ‘Miniskirt Blues’ (1991). The Cramps are an American indie band whose work draws heavily on the schlock-horror filmmaking tradition of recent years. ‘Miniskirt Blues’, in which Cramps vocalist Lux Interior is joined for a vocal duet by the great Iggy Pop, appears on the album Look Mom No Head.
  
  
• Madd Hatter Review: ‘Miniskirts’ (2001). This track appears on the funkmaster’s album It’s A Madd Madd World.
  
  
• In 2003, a Japanese pop band called Miniskirt released a debut album entitled Woody Allen Likes Guitar Pop. They deny that their name was influenced by the 1997 Japanese pop hit, ‘Miniskirt’ by Hideki Kaji.