Spanish Origin of Miniskirt?

[Baker, John]

Garson has advised that my last post was gobbledygook, so I'm trying re-sending.


I do see a number of articles from 1962 that refer to the skirts as "ya-ya skirts."   The earliest is in the Winnipeg Free Press, June 14, 1962.  It was called simply the "ya ya" in the Winnipeg Free Press on July 7, 1962.  

Since these reports of "ya-ya girls" and "ya-ya skirts" seem to have spread quickly, I suppose that Occam's razor tells us that they must have spread to Mexico City, a psychiatrist wrote an article of some kind linking the short skirts to fears of international conflict, and a wire service reporter in Mexico City then wrote a humorous article based primarily on the psychiatrist's piece.  Perhaps the psychiatrist's piece used the term "minifalda," which I understand is Spanish for miniskirt.  But without further evidence we have no way of knowing whether it influenced the English term "miniskirt," beyond this one use in 1962.


John Baker

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