Miniskirt coloured tights. Towards the end of the 1960s, an even shorter version, called the microskirt or micro-mini, emerged. Extremely short skirts, some as much as eight inches above the knee, were observed in Britain in the summer of 1962. The young women who wore these short skirts were called "Ya-Ya girls," a term derived from "yeah, yeah" which was a popular catcall at the time. One retailer noted that the fashion for layered net crinoline petticoats raised the hems of short skirts even higher. The designer Mary Quant was quoted as saying that "short short skirts" indicated youthfulness which was
British popular music bands, who provided a social and popular music that began to dominate social occasions and the radio airwaves. By 1950 indigenous forms of British popular music were already giving way to the influence of American forms of music including jazz, swing and traditional pop, mediated through film and records. The significant change of the mid-1950s was the impact of American rock and roll, which provided a new model for performance and recording, based on a youth market. Initially this was dominated by American acts, or re-creations of American forms of music, but soon distinctly British forms began to appear, first