A number of the fall menswear shows in held in Paris in January 2009 featured skirts for men. The designers who showed skirts on the runway included Marc Jacobs for Louis Vuitton, Number (N)ine, Comme des Garçons, Yohji Yamamoto, Jean-Paul Gaultier, Rick Owens, Yves Saint Laurent and Alexander McQueen. The models shown ranged from flowing long skirts to skirt-like skorts.
Men’s Skirts are Popular in Many Parts of the World
Men’s clothing in many cultures traditionally includes garments made from fabric folded and wrapped around the waist. The traditional male skirt can either be short, like the Scottish kilt and Greek foustanella, or long, like the dhoti and lungi in India, the sarong in southeast Asia, and the lavalava in Samoa. Many millions of men today wear skirts for work, for play, and to both formal and casual occasions. Skirts have several advantages that contribute to their enduring popularity: they are cool in the mostly hot climates where they are traditionally worn, non-constricting, and in most cases are easy to make from a simple rectangle of cloth.
Western Men Prefer Pants, Resist Fashion Designers Who Create Trendy Skirts for Men
The love affair with skirts has never taken hold in North America and most of Europe. Western popular culture has long branded men who wear skirts as either effeminate or oddballs.
In the 1980s, fashion designers tried to create a groundswell of skirt-wearing men in the previously skirt-phobic regions of the West, but the fashion never caught on with the public. Apart from a few male celebrities, a few actors, like Mel Gibson in the movie Braveheart (1995), Russell Crowe in Gladiator (2000), and a few adventurous men who wear kilts at weddings or special events that emphasize a particular ethnic heritage, most Western men still wouldn’t be caught dead in a skirt.
A Few Clothing Makers Offer Skirts for Ordinary Men
There are some western men who want to stand out from the crowd. A small group of clothing companies make skirts specifically designed for men. Men’s kilt-maker Utilikilts offers eight different styles of skirts, including mock-khakis for office workers, a kilt made from heavy-duty duck cloth for manual labor, a survival model whose pockets can hold “20 Bottles of the survival beverage of your choice,” and a formal kilt called the Tuxedo, made of lightweight black wool.
But there are few signs that the men’s skirt is about to become a fashion trend. Designer Marc Jacobs may wear a skirt to Fashion Week events, but the average Western man seems likely to stick with what skirt-makers like to call “bifurcated garments,” or pants.
Christine Mann - Christine Mann writes about quilting, home decor sewing, and creativity in daily life.
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