How old's too old to wear a mini? New research shows that the average age women give up short skirts has soared to 40 (2024)

How old's too old to wear a mini? New research shows that the average age women give up short skirts has soared to 40

By Daily Mail Reporter
Updated: 11:43, 2 September 2009

They were the sartorial emblem of freedom for girls in the swinging Sixties and have been a fashion favourite of the young ever since. But now it seems women are happy to bare a lot of leg in a mini-skirt right up to the age of 40.

In 1980, few women older than 33 would dare to venture out in a short skirt for fear of being labelled 'mutton dressed as lamb'.

But today they are being worn for almost a decade longer before being consigned to the back of the wardrobe, according to Debenhams.

'It shows that women have an increasing confidence in their bodies and are happy to dress accordingly,' says the store's spokesman Ed Watson.

'If the trend continues, there's no doubt that, within a decade, women in their mid-40s and early 50s will rightly regard a mini-skirt as an essential part of their everyday wardrobe.'

Celebrities such as Victoria Beckham, 35, Danni Minogue, 38 next month, Elle Macpherson, 46, Cindy Crawford, 43, Jennifer Aniston, 40, and Courteney Cox, 45, are all fans of the mini.

They may come under fire for signs of ageing around the knees, but they do have generally flawless legs. The modern, image-obsessed culture means that women work hard to maintain a youthful appearance, spending hours in the gym and even undergoing plastic surgery.

It all bodes well for the future of the mini-skirt - but how old is too old to wear one? We asked five female writers for their opinion...

35... says Marcelle D'Argy Smith, 62

Some women should never start wearing minis. It's not always about age - short skirts never did anything for the heavy-hipped and overweight. The shorter the skirt, the more it accentuates the hips. The more it shows off bad legs.

Yes, all legs are good, but some are more perfect than others. Helen Gurley Brown, who founded Cosmo, had perfect legs.

Let's face it - minis are for slender, stylish women, under 35 (or looking 35) and little girls. Little girls look very sweet in short skirts.

So do hot skinny teenagers and women in their ragingly sexual come-and-get-me twenties. I remember it well. A lot of men came and got us and that's, I'm sure, why, in fashion's and the public's mind, the mini-skirt never goes away for very long.

Legs are sexy. Legs are sporty, young, innocent. Legs lead up to private territory. Good legs make men look twice. Especially bare legs.

It's why women in their 40s and, gulp, 50s with half-way decent legs think they project a youthful kickiness when they wear a mini. 'I'm a girl,' is the message.

They'll often go to the gym, forgo wheat and dairy and whip teenage garments off the rail at Topshop because they're a teensy bit anxious.

A 40-plus woman who wears a mini knows she's running out of time. If you marry Rod Stewart you wear a mini for life, of course.

Also, wearing a mini when you're over 40 - unless four inches above the knee and with opaque tights - shows you haven't a clue about fashion. Of course, if Ken down the pub thinks you've got fab legs, then fashion be damned.

But tell me - can you picture Nigella in a mini? Would she turn more heads in admiration? She knows she doesn't have the shape for a mini-skirt. And, frankly, she's too stylish.

If you want to look terrific for your age and weight you have to be very self-critical. How trim are my hips, how wonderful are my legs, you have to ask yourself as you stand in front of the mirror.

Consider your knees. Poor 46-year-old Elle Macpherson - she who is known as 'The Body' - didn't think about hers and was vilified recently when she ventured out with bare legs and a mini. Knees drop. Knees wrinkle. And crucially - how often does a woman over 35 have the face for a mini? Very rarely, I'd say.

65... says Emma Soames, 59

There is nothing more ageing than a long skirt on women of a certain age. You can get away with lovely white hair and lots of wrinkles, but long skirts are the precursor to the shroud.

Girls in their 20s and 30s can waft around looking charmingly like the girl in the Timotei advert, hippy-dippy in mid-calf or long skirts. But this same length can make most women a decade or too later in life look older than our chronological age. We do not want to embrace our inner grandmother.

There is, however, an important difference between short and mini; it is one that older women need to discover fast if they do not want to walk around to the sound of bleating mutton.

A short skirt can be perhaps four inches above the knee, but not a millimetre shorter. The hemline should fall in the middle of that bit of the leg that is still thin before becoming thigh.

For every year over 50 the length should perhaps come down a tiny bit. But my opinion of when women should stop wearing short skirts changes with my own age. Until recently I thought we should drop hems to the knee at 55 - now I think it can wait another decade.

It isn't so much a matter of age as whether you want to look modern - which I do very much, if that's OK with the world.

I haven't worn anything below the knee since the turn of the millennium, and that was a terrible mistake with the words Jean Muir on the label.

Nearly ten years on, my skirts are possibly on the knee for very sober, formal events or above the knee on every other day of the year. They make me feel energetic and ageless, while hopefully not foolish.

Indeed thanks to some very opaque tights (let's hear it for 100 denier) I am going to celebrate the dawn of my seventh decade this winter with skirts well above the knee - a look I promise to bin if small children run screaming for their mothers at the sight of me.

55... says Rachel Johnson, 43

On Bank Holiday Monday this week, I opened my 15-year-old daughter's drawer and rummaged among the wisps of Topshop and vintage until I'd found what I was looking for: a Levi's denim skirt.

I wore it low slung around my hips, added a grey TV shirt and flip-flops. It was, I should add, about eight inches long, max. And I am 43 years old. So you can take it that I am not one to approve of, let alone observe, diktats about age-appropriate dressing.

I don't believe there should be any rules about what middle-aged women - in any decade - shouldn't wear (bikinis, long hair, grey hair, leather, chaps, etc, the list of banned items is endless).

I think most sensible and stylish women have an innate sense of what works and what doesn't without any need for dogma or rules, because dressing is more about context than convention.

So I broke the no-thigh zone on Monday, because I was heading to the Notting Hill carnival, where most women I saw were shaking their booties in not much more than tinfoil bikinis.

But on Tuesday, I put on a demure, knee-length, pink tweed dress, because I was going to work. Indeed it was the first day of my new job as the editor of The Lady magazine, and it wouldn't have seemed right to have worked the blonde surfer look then. As for when I'm going to stop and enter my twinset-and-pearls years - never!

Carine Roitfeld, editor of French Vogue is even older than I (and she has much better and longer legs). Her trademark look is wasted biker who's forgotten her skirt, and I hope she never changes it.

I wear minis (mid-thigh, mind) and will continue to wear them until my knees no longer pass muster, because it's fun, because knee-length is too Carla Bruni, mid-calf is disastrous, and full-length maxi is - paradoxically - a look only the very young can carry off.

If really pushed, I'd say it's not until about 55 that a woman should give up mini-skirts - and only if she wants to.

So despite my position, I am thrilled that the fatwa on women wearing minis has now leapt a decade, from 30 to 40. It's as if we've all been given a longer lease of life in short skirts.

I think this is a sign (long overdue and most welcome) that tells us that society is finally getting round to accepting not just that 50 is the new fittie, but that good legs are good legs at any age.

60... says Christa D'Souza, 48

Minis will always be in fashion - well, at least in my world. I may not have the waist I had before kids, and my family may start a little when they see me in the morning before my face has had a chance to rearrange itself, but my legs - though I say so myself - are in pretty good shape.

I'm an apple shape, you see, rather than a pear, meaning I hold my fat above my legs rather than below. Years of Bikram yoga and a judicious attitude to carbs mean there's none of that tell-tale flesh sagging above my knee caps, and there's none of that horrid collapsing effect at the top of the thigh area either.

I'm lucky, I know. There are plenty of women much younger than me (which is 48 and five-twelfths) who wouldn't be seen dead in a mini-skirt.

Or so I was thinking to myself as I was walking down my local High Street the other day and spotted a woman with long hair just like mine, dressed just like me, in a denim mini and Uggs. Hmm, I thought smugly, isn't it funny how a mini-skirt on an older woman can make her look a little like that old Club 18-30 ad?

It took a couple of seconds to realise I was looking in a shop window, and that that woman was actually me.

Oh, it's a dilemma this. What is the cut-off point is for wearing a mini? When I was 20, I always thought it would be 30. When I was 30 it was always 39. When I was 39, it was definitely, no doubt about it, 50.

And now that I'm almost there? Well. OK, of course I will give them up eventually - I think 60 has to be the cut-off point. I'd look a little weird in a mini in a retirement home being spoonfed by a nurse.

But do I really have to do it right now? To be honest, the mini-skirt has come to be, in my middle age, a bit of a fashion default button, a sartorial 'blankie' if you like.

Many of my female friends, when they're having a 'fat day' or can't think of anything else to wear, will chuck on a pair of jeans or trackie bottoms.

Me, I'll chuck on one of my beloved Marc Jacobs denim minis, all of them so well-worn that they curl up in the front like court jester's shoes.

A denim mini is what I wear on my bike to Starbucks every morning; it's what I wear to do the school run; it's what was welded onto me when we went camping in the mountains of Colorado last summer.

But am I deluding myself? Am I becoming one of those batty women that teenagers look kindly upon and contemporaries whisper about behind their backs?

Perhaps I have to take a long, hard look at myself in the mirror and realise that just because I've got reasonable gams, just because my nice butcher sometimes calls me 'miss', just because 50 is supposed to be the new 30, and 30 is supposed to be the new 15, doesn't necessarily mean I can still get away with wearing a mini-skirt.

Tonight, meanwhile, for a dinner with friends, I'll be wearing one of my most treasured possessions: a black Balenciaga mini I bought at a sale at Matches in Wimbledon a couple of years ago, with a black jacket over the top and probably boots.

It's more of a belt than a skirt really, and needs to be worn with tights, but ohhh, on those days when one's tummy feels a bit billowy, when the task of pouring oneself into a tight pair of trousers feels too cruel for words, I couldn't think of wearing anything else.

40... says Jilly Johnson, 55

At school they called me Giraffe because my legs were knobbly and bony. As a coltish teenager I developed a more shapely calf, but still felt awkward and shy about my lanky limbs.

I sincerely did not appreciate that I had been blessed with good legs until 1970, when my model agent accepted bookings from various hosiery companies - then later Pretty Polly.

In my 20s with a wonderful new-found confidence, I paraded those legs in the tiniest of micro-skirts and hot pants, dressed them up in lacy tights, fishnets or just bare, bronzed legs - but always with skyscraper heels (subtle as a sledgehammer!).

Like the rest of the nation, my legs were on permanent display and I cavorted and pranced into the Eighties - when the mini-skirt took a back seat in the fashion industry.

But that didn't daunt the many devout mini-wearers like myself - as far as we were concerned, the mini never died - and never will! My teenage daughter, Lucy, and I shared skimpy skirts and carefree spirits.

Into the Nineties I pirouetted, but with a growing acknowledgement that my legs should soon be retiring - after all, I was approaching 40, and they do say that it's ungainly and unsophisticated for a woman to bare her legs after a certain age - and that certain age was absolutely upon me.

Terrified of being labelled 'mutton dressed as lamb' I lowered my hemline. Getting older didn't really affect my legs - only my face and self-confidence.

Facial dilapidations occur daily after 40, and I was aware that my legs no longer matched my face.

Now in my 50s, I've lowered my skirts to knee-length and I try to retain a little bit of youthfulness with small side splits and a funky belt - but I still mourn the mini and remember those wonderful lithe, blithe days of my leggy youth.

Yet I have to admit I contravened my golden rule last winter and wore an elongated jumper-dress which was four inches above the knee - but with the valuable advice of my daughter, I teamed it with thick, woolly tights which disguised the wobbly bits, plus flat, butch, biker boots.

Yes, I got away with it - but only because of the accessories, it was the exception to the rule.

Generally, I believe that mini-skirts should be abandoned once you hit 40 - otherwise it smacks of desperation and low self-esteem.

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