Miniskirt no consensus as to who designed it first. Valerie Steele has noted that the claim that Quant was first is more convincingly supported by evidence than the equivalent Courrèges claim. However, the contemporary fashion journalist Marit Allen, who edited the influential "Young Ideas" pages for UK "Vogue", firmly stated that the British designer John Bates was the first to offer fashionable miniskirts. Other designers, including Pierre Cardin and Yves Saint Laurent, had also been raising hemlines at the same time. The miniskirt is one of the garments most widely associated with Mary Quant. Quant herself is ambivalent about the claim
Miniskirt were modeled on those worn by female cheerleaders at sporting and other events. In 1985, the British designer Vivienne Westwood offered her first "mini-crini," an abbreviated version of the Victorian crinoline. Its mini-length, bouffant silhouette inspired the puffball skirts widely presented by more established designers such as Christian Lacroix. In 1989, Westwood's mini-crini was described as having combined two conflicting ideals – the crinoline, representing a "mythology of restriction and encumbrance in woman's dress", and the "equally dubious mythology of liberation" associated with the miniskirt. From the 1980s, many women began to incorporate the miniskirt into their business attire, a