Does it matter who invented the mini? Fashion's a free-for-all

Ownership, authorship, originality. They're hotly contested subjects in fashion, because they're so difficult to argue about. What came from where? Who did it best? And, perhaps most importantly of all, who did it first? “I wanted always to be different, and always the first, if possible,” Miuccia Prada once told me. I suspect it's that kind of thinking that fires most fashion designers. A healthy dose of competition. The urge to beat the pack to an idea.

Of course, once you get there, plenty of other people show up at the same time. That's the thing about fashion: it's tied to the moment in which it's created, meaning lots of people are exposed to the same cultural influences at the same time. That's how trends are born. How to reconcile, for instance, the fact that this spring/summer half a dozen designers of wildly disparate identity – from Dior to Céline to Roberto Cavalli – decided it was time to dress women in lingerie-inspired slips? Coincidentally, from April this year the Victoria and Albert Museum is staging an exhibition focused on underwear. That's been years in the making – why does it all tie together?

It's tricky – but designers aren't in cahoots. Indeed, they hold their design cards notoriously close to their chests. But the death of André Courrèges last week threw it into relief for me, when many obituaries hurrahed Courrèges as the “inventor” of the mini skirt. An equal number of people contested that the London boutique owner Mary Quant originated the style.

ourrèges's legacy is an odd one, because despite being immediately recognisable and one of fashion's most intriguingly enduring – the narrow-shouldered topstitched jackets, the goggle-like cosmonaut sunglasses, those go-go boots – Courrèges was seldom first. He showed slick, slender trousers for day at about the same time that Yves Saint Laurent did. He also launched designer ready-to-wear a year after YSL's Rive Gauche line was founded. Courrèges's 1965 “space age” line was all his, but it responded to a cultural moment – the fascination with the possibilities of outer space travel and cosmonauts; 2001: A Space Odyssey was released in 1968, as was Barbarella. Star Trek began in September 1966. It was a cultural moment.

But back to those mini skirts: which came first, the chicken or the egg? Or rather the legs – because the permissive 1960s encouraged provocative experimentation, not least in attire, and doubtless young women on the street began to raise their hemlines high before couture determined it was chic, or even before Quant offered her ready-to-wear versions. That's the issue with so much in fashion: I'm not sure anyone can really claim ownership. Fashion belongs to everyone.