The official birthday of hotpants is 1970 by Mariuccia Mandelli of the Italian fashion label Krizia. However, some also cite Mary Quant, the miniskirt’s originator, as the creator of hotpants in the late 1960s (although they weren’t officially called “hotpants” until later). Whoever deserves credit, it goes without saying, the world owes her a debt of gratitude.
Short shorts had been worn informally since the 1920s, generally for sports activities. It wasn’t until the women’s liberation movement and sexual revolution of the late sixties that they became fashionable. As the seventies wore on, hotpants gradually grew out of favor, but equally high hemmed running shorts and dolphin shorts as well as Daisy Dukes filled the short-shorts void.
-Flashbak
