Skirt

A skirt is the lower part of a dress or a separate outer garment that covers a person from the waist downwards.
At its simplest, a skirt can be a draped garment made out of a single piece of fabric (such as pareos). However, most skirts are fitted to the body at the waist or hips and fuller below, with the fullness introduced by means of darts, gores, pleats, or panels. Modern skirts are usually made of light to mid-weight fabrics, such as denim, jersey, worsted, or poplin. Skirts of thin or clingy fabrics are often worn with slips to make the material of the skirt drape better and for modesty.
In modern times, skirts are very commonly worn by women and girls. Some exceptions include the izaar, worn by many Muslim cultures, and the kilt, a traditional men's garment in Scotland, Ireland, and sometimes England.
The hemline of skirts can vary from micro to floor-length and can vary according to cultural conceptions of modesty and aesthetics as well as the wearer's personal taste, which can be influenced by such factors as fashion and social context. Most skirts are complete garments, but some skirt-looking panels may be part of another garment such as leggings, shorts, and swimsuits.
Skirts have been worn since prehistoric times as the simplest way to cover the lower body. Figurines produced by the Vinča culture (c. 5700–4500 BC) located on the territory of present-day Serbia and neighboring Balkans from the start of the Copper Age show women in skirt-like garments.
A straw-woven skirt dating to 3900 BC was discovered in Armenia at the Areni-1 cave. Skirts were the standard attire for men and women in all ancient cultures in the Near East and Egypt. The Sumerians in Mesopotamia wore kaunakes (Ancient Greek: καυνάκης, romanized: kaunákēs, ultimately from Sumerian: 𒌆𒄖𒅘𒆪 GU-NAK-KU), a type of fur skirt tied to a belt. The term originally referred to a sheep's fleece, but eventually came to be applied to the garment itself. Eventually, the animal pelts were replaced by "kaunakes cloth", a textile that imitated fleecy sheepskin. Kaunakes cloth also served as a symbol in religious iconography, such as in the fleecy cloak of John the Baptist.
Ancient Egyptian garments were mainly made of linen. For the upper classes, they were beautifully woven and intricately pleated. Around 2130 BC, during the Old Kingdom of Egypt, men wore wraparound skirts (kilts) known as the shendyt. They were made of a rectangular piece of cloth wrapped around the lower body and tied in front. By the Middle Kingdom of Egypt, longer skirts, reaching from the waist to ankles and sometimes hanging from the armpits, became fashionable. During the New Kingdom of Egypt, kilts with a pleated triangular section became fashionable for men. Beneath these, a shente, or triangular loincloth whose ends were fastened with cord ties, were worn.
During the Bronze Age, in the Southern parts of Western and Central Europe, wraparound dress-like garments were preferred. However, in Northern Europe, people also wore skirts and blouses.
In the Middle Ages, men and women preferred dress-like garments. The lower part of men's dresses were much shorter in length compared to those for women. They were wide cut and often pleated or gored so that horse riding was more comfortable. Even a knight's armor had a short metal skirt below the breastplate. It covered the straps attaching the upper legs iron cuisse to the breastplate. Technological advances in weaving in the 13th–15th century, like foot-treadle floor looms and scissors with pivoted blades and handles, improved tailoring trousers and tights. They became fashionable for men and henceforth became standard male attire whilst becoming taboo for women.
One of the earliest known cultures to have females wear clothing resembling miniskirts were the Duan Qun Miao (Chinese: 短裙苗), which literally means "Short Skirt Miao". This was in reference to the short miniskirts "that barely cover the buttocks" worn by women of the tribe, and which were probably shocking to observers in premodern and early modern times.
In the Middle Ages, some upper-class women wore skirts over three meters in diameter at the bottom. At the other extreme, the miniskirts of the 1960s were minimal garments that may have barely covered the underwear when the woman was seated. Costume historians typically use the word "petticoat" to describe skirt-like garments of the 18th century or earlier.
During the 19th century, the cut of women's dresses in western culture varied more widely than in any other century. Waistlines started just below the bust (the Empire silhouette) and gradually sank to the natural waist. Skirts started fairly narrow and increased dramatically to the hoopskirt and crinoline-supported styles of the 1860s; then fullness was draped and drawn to the back by means of bustles. In the 1890s, the rainy daisy skirt was introduced for walking or sportswear. It had a significantly shorter hemline measuring as much as six inches off the ground and would eventually influence the wider introduction of shorter hemlines in the early 20th century.
In the 19th century, in the United States and United Kingdom, there was a movement against skirts as part of the Victorian dress reform movement, and in the United States, the National Dress Reform Association. There was also the invention of different ways to wear skirts. For example, in 1851, early women's rights advocate Elizabeth Smith Miller introduced Amelia Bloomer to a garment initially known as the "Turkish dress", which featured a knee-length skirt over Turkish-style pantaloons. Bloomer came to advocate and promote the dress, including instructions for making it, in The Lily, a newspaper dedicated to the "Emancipation of Woman from Intemperance, Injustice, Prejudice, and Bigotry". This inspired a craze for the dress, which came to be known as bloomers. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Lucy Stone, other early advocates for women's rights, also adopted this style of dress in the 1850s, referring to it as the "freedom dress". Concurrently, some female labourers, notably the pit brow women working at coal pits in the Wigan area, began wearing trousers beneath a short skirt as a practical component of their uniform. This attracted the attention of the public, and various photographers produced records of the women's unconventional manner of dress through the mid to late 19th century.
After 1915, ankle-length skirts were not generally worn in the daytime. For the next fifty years fashionable skirts became short (1920s), then long (1930s), then shorter (in the War Years with their restrictions on fabric), then long (the "New Look"), then shortest of all from 1967 to 1970, when skirts became as short as possible while avoiding exposure of underwear, which was considered taboo.
Since the 1970s and the rise of pants/trousers for women as an option for all but the most formal of occasions, no one skirt length has dominated fashion for long, with short and ankle-length styles often appearing side by side in fashion magazines and catalogs.
Fashion designers such as Jean Paul Gaultier, Vivienne Westwood, Kenzo and Marc Jacobs have also shown men's skirts. Transgressing social codes, Gaultier frequently introduces the skirt into his men's wear collections as a means of injecting novelty into male attire, most famously the sarong seen on David Beckham.
There are a number of garments marketed to men which fall under the category of "skirt" or "dress". These go by a variety of names and form part of the traditional dress for men from various cultures. Usage varies – the dhoti is part of everyday dress on the Indian subcontinent while the kilt is more usually restricted to occasional wear and the fustanella is used almost exclusively as costume. Robes, which are a type of dress for men, have existed in many cultures, including the Japanese kimono, the Chinese cheongsam, the Arabic thobe, and the African Senegalese kaftan. Robes are also used in some religious orders, such as the cassock in Christianity and various robes and cloaks that may be used in pagan rituals. Examples of men's skirts and skirt-like garments from various cultures include:
Aside from the wearing of kilts, in the Western world skirts, dresses, and similar garments are generally viewed exclusively as women's clothing which, historically, was not always the case. However, some Western men have taken up skirts as forms of civil protest. Other Western men advocate skirts as a measure of co-equality between women and men.
The skirt is a part of uniforms for girls in many schools around the world, with lengths varying depending on local culture. The pleated tartan skirt began as a component of girls' school uniforms in the early twentieth century in the United Kingdom. Most UK schools now allow girls to wear trousers, but many girls still wear skirts in primary and secondary schools, even where the choice of trousers is given. In the late 20th and early 21st century, many schools began changing their uniform rules to allow trousers for girls amidst opposition to skirts-only policies - the most publicised possibly being Jo Hale vs Whickham Comprehensive in 2000. Although it is commonly accepted that girls may wear trousers to school, no test case is known to have been brought before the courts, making the legal position uncertain on requiring skirts as part of girls' uniforms. The rule is still enforced in many schools, particularly independent and selective state schools. In fact, United Kingdom government guidelines expressly state the decision of allowing girls to wear trousers is with individual schools.
In the 1980s in Puerto Rico, Ana Irma Rivera Lassén was not allowed to enter court in trousers and was told to wear a skirt. She sued the judge and won.
In 2022, the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit ruled against the Charter Day School in North Carolina, which had required girls to wear skirts due to the idea that girls are "fragile vessels" deserving "gentle" treatment from boys. The court ruled the requirement was unconstitutional.
Since 2004, the International Skating Union has allowed women to wear trousers instead of skirts in competition if they wish.
Many forms of dancing require women to wear skirts or dresses, either by convention or competition rules. In Scottish highland dancing, for example, women wear the Aboyne dress, which actually involves a skirt, for the national dances, and wear a kilt-based outfit for the Highland dances.