The Goods: The surprisingly controversial history of the midi-length skirt

Did every woman in Manhattan wake up one morning and decide to buy a leopard-print midi skirt?” This is the question, posed by writer Jess Bergman on Twitter, that women nationwide found themselves asking as they realized they were under siege by a particular silk skirt this summer.

The leopard midi has become not just an but the item to own this season, and the spotted look could be easily caught out in the wild, walking around the subway, grabbing mimosas on a patio, or out grocery shopping at a farmers market. Everywhere you look, the spotted midi seems to be present. There is even an Instagram page dedicated to it called LeopardPrintMidi. But the midi hasn’t always been this popular. In fact, in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s, America was in what Women’s Wear Daily called the “hemline war.”

By the seventies, fashion had became a supermarket. There were so many options and styles that you could pick and choose what you wanted to pop into your cart. The miniskirt came from London in 1964 and quickly spread from mannequins to dancefloors to office buildings. At first it hovered just above the knee, but it slowly began cropping up and up until it had nowhere to go except back down.

In 1968, WWD declared that the mini was out and the midi — a long skirt that comes to about mid-calf — was in. A leader in its industry that knew when tides were about to shift, WWD’s predictions usually came true. “The whole look of American women will now change and diehard miniskirt adherents are going to be out in the fashion cold,” the publication promised. The thing was, the world wasn’t ready to hide the leg again.

Read the full article on The Goods.