Torn

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Factual: Arts, Culture & the Media: Arts

Gus Casely-Hayford unpicks the hidden histories behind what we wear.

Gus Casely-Hayford unpicks the hidden histories behind what we wear by exploring ten key moments in fashion spanning the globe and five centuries.

Gus Casely-Hayford unpicks the hidden histories behind what we wear by exploring ten key moments in fashion spanning the globe and five centuries. From the start of the global trade in cotton, to the accidental invention of artificial dyes, to Nike Air Jordans, Casely-Hayford reveals the historical weight we carry through our clothes and the statements we make just by getting dressed in the morning.

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Torn: The stories behind the clothes we wear: Miniskirt

Miniskirt

The stories behind the clothes we wear

BBC Radio 4 - Torn, The stories behind the clothes we wear, Miniskirt

Gus Casely-Hayford explores the controversial history of the miniskirt.

Gus Casely-Hayford explores the history of one of the most controversial items of clothing we wear - the miniskirt.

It's 1965 and London is about to become the capital of cool. 

Designer Mary Quant is watching the fashionable girls of Chelsea go by from the window of her shop, Bazaar. Their hemlines seem to be getting shorter and shorter. Inspired, Mary gets to work and what she comes up with many will find deeply shocking. It’s the miniskirt.

In episode eight of Torn, Gus Casely-Hayford finds that media, society and feminists can never agree on whether the miniskirt is a good thing. Fashion historian Valerie Steele draws parallels with the 1920s when feminist disagreed over whether the knee-length flapper skirt was frivolous, or favourable to feminism.  

Gus discovers that when Mary Quant popularised the miniskirt in the 1960s, no matter what the papers or parents had to say about them, girls and young women were desperate to get their hands on one. Eve Shrewsbury was one of them, and she shocked the older generation in her village in rural Northamptonshire by wearing a miniskirt. Fast forward to 2019 when Clara Mitchell decides to wear a miniskirt to high school in Little Rock, Arkansas and the controversy surrounding her decision goes viral.


Presenter: Gus Casely-Hayford
Executive Producer: Rosie Collyer
Producer: Tiffany Cassidy
Assistant Producer: Nadia Mehdi
Production Coordinator: Francesca Taylor
Sound Design: Rob Speight

A Novel production for BBC Radio 4

Torn: The stories behind the clothes we wear

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