She made short shorts hot pants
Mariuccia Mandelli was an Italian fashion designer whose long list of credits includes the shortest of achievements — she was widely described as having invented hot pants.
Mandelli, a former schoolteacher and self-taught designer, founded the fashion house Krizia in the mid-1950s. She reigned for decades as “the godmother of classic Milanese fashion,” as Newsweek described her in 1987.
Mandelli died this week at her home in Milan. She was 90.
One of Italy’s first ready-to-wear houses, Krizia — known for designs that combined wit, whimsy and wearability — helped secure the country’s place in the fashion firmament. At its height in the 1990s, Krizia was a $500 million-a-year business, with a string of retail shops worldwide and a spate of branded products that included eyeglasses, neckties, furniture and perfumes.
Last year, its fortunes waning, the company was sold to the Chinese retail group Shenzhen Marisfrolg Fashion.
Mandelli was attracted to dimensional extremes. “Either very short or very long,” she told the New York Times in 1987. “Either tight or loose.”
For her, the zenith of very-shortness came just before New Year’s 1971, when she introduced the garment that would come to be known as hot pants.
Unlike conventional shorts, hot pants had no waistband and were often made of sumptuous fabrics like satin or velvet. They also had minimal vertical reach.
While hot pants may simply have been a ubiquitous idea whose time had come, the fashion press, including Women’s Wear Daily, overwhelmingly credits Mandelli with their invention.
In a January 1971 article about the hotpants phenomenon, the Times wrote: “Stores that got in early with the new craze are reporting a surprising amount of interest in their shorts departments, whether they’re calling the garment ‘Cool Pants’ (Bergdorf’s), ‘Shortcuts’ (Bloomingdale’s) or ‘Hot Pants’ (Ohrbach’s, Alexander’s). Cold weather seems not to be deterring women who want to be first with a new fad.”
Husbands, the Times added, were also encouraging their wives to buy them.
If there was a unifying ethos underlying Mandelli’s fashion, it was, she said, that nothing should feel forced — neither for the designer nor for the wearer.
“I would be ashamed to tell women, ‘You must dress like this or like that because it is the year’s fashion,’” she said in an interview quoted by the Chicago Tribune in 1987.
“Everyone must dress as they like, provided that the dress becomes for them a second skin.”