John Bates (designer) the Year and donated to the Fashion Museum, Bath, which in 2006 held a major retrospective show of his work. One of Bates' most influential champions was Marit Allen, the editor of British Vogue's Young Ideas spread, who considered Bates the true inventor of the miniskirt, rather than Mary Quant or André Courrèges. Ernestine Carter also observed Bates' originality, noting that the Paris fashion collections for 1967 contained many looks which Bates had done first. In 1965 Bates designed memorable outfits for Diana Rigg to wear for her role as Emma Peel in "The Avengers", including Op-Art mini-coats and accessories
Miniskirt such as that by Earle K. Bergey who depicted futuristic women in a "stereotyped combination" of metallic miniskirt, bra and boots. The "sci-fi miniskirt" was seen in genre films and television programmes as well as on comic book covers. The very short skirts worn by regular female characters Carol and Tonga (played by Virginia Hewitt and Nina Bara) in the 1950–55 television series "Space Patrol" have been suggested as probably the first 'micro-minis' to have been seen on American television. It was later seen as remarkable that only one formal complaint relating to the skirts could be recalled, and that