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 not called "mini" until the 1960s. Figurines produced by the Vinča culture (c. 5700–4500 BCE) have been interpreted by archaeologists as representing women in miniskirt-like garments. One of the oldest surviving garments resembling a miniskirt is the short woollen skirt with bronze ornaments worn by the Egtved Girl for her burial in the Nordic Bronze Age (c. 1390–1370 BCE). One of the earliest known cultures where women regularly wore clothing resembling miniskirts was a subgroup of the Miao people of China, the Duan Qun Miao (, literally "short skirt Miao"). In albums produced during the Qing dynasty (1644–1912) from the