Men's skirts
Outside Western cultures, men's clothing commonly includes skirts and skirt-like garments; however, in the Americas and much of Europe, skirts are usually seen as feminine clothing and socially stigmatized for men and boys to wear, despite having done so for centuries.[1] While there are exceptions, most notably the cassock and the kilt, these are not really considered 'skirts' in the typical sense of fashion wear; rather they are worn as cultural and vocational garments. People have variously attempted to promote the fashionable wearing of skirts by men in Western culture and to do away with this gender distinction.
In Western cultures
Ancient times
Skirts have been worn since prehistoric times. They were the standard dressing for men and women in all ancient cultures in the Middle East.
The Kingdom of
Depictions of kings and their attendants from Babylonia on monuments like the Black Obelisk of Salmanazar show men wearing fringed cloths wrapped around their sleeved tunics.[5]
Ancient Egyptian garments were mainly made of white linen.[6] The exclusive use of draped linen garments, and the wearing of similar styles by men and women, remained almost unaltered as the main features of Ancient Egyptian costume. From about 2130 BC during the Old Kingdom of Egypt, men also wore wrap around 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 there was a fashion for longer kilts, almost like skirts, reaching from the waist to ankles, sometimes hanging from the armpits. During the New Kingdom of Egypt, kilts with a pleated triangular section became fashionable for men.[7] Beneath was worn a triangular loincloth, or shente,[what language is this?] whose ends were fastened with cord ties.[8]
In
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Statue of Ramaat, an official from Gizeh wearing a pleated Egyptian kilt, ca. 2.250 BC
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A Greek charioteer from Delphi wearing a long chiton, ca. 470 BC
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An illustration from between 1325 and 1335 showing an English man in a skirted garment
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Men's dress made of red silk (1480–90) to be buttoned on the front, History Museum of Bern (Switzerland)
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Duke Ulrich of Mecklenburg wearing a doublet and diverted skirt with codpiece and black tights, (1573)
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Henry VIII wearing a doublet and diverted skirt with codpiece
The Romans adopted many facets of Greek culture, including the same manner of dressing. The Celts and Germanic peoples wore a skirted garment which the historian Diodorus Siculus (fl. 1st century BC) called chiton. Below they wore knee-length trousers. The Anglo-Saxons, Normans, Franks and other people of Western and Northern Europe continued this fashion well into the Middle Ages, as can be seen in the Bayeux Tapestry.[11]
Technological advances in weaving with foot-treadle floor
Decline
The innovative new techniques especially improved tailoring trousers and tights, which require more differently cut pieces of cloth than most skirts do in their designs. "Real" trousers and tights increasingly replaced the prevalent use of the hose (clothing) which like stockings covered only the legs and had to be attached with garters to underpants or a doublet.[14] A skirt-like garment to cover the crotch and bottom were no longer necessary. In an intermediate stage to openly wearing trousers the upper classes favoured voluminous pantskirts and diverted skirts like the padded hose or the latter petticoat breeches.[15]
Though during most of history, men and especially dominant men have been colourful in pants and skirts like Hindu
Revival
In the 1960s, there was a widespread reaction against the accepted North American and European conventions of ”male and female dresses”. This unisex fashion movement aimed to eliminate the sartorial differences between men and women. In practice, it usually meant that women would wear male dresses, i.e. shirts and trousers. Men rarely went as far in the adoption of traditionally female dress modes.
Some exceptions were the costumes of pop musicians. Mick Jagger of the Rolling Stones wore a white dress over white trousers for their 1969 Stones in the Park Concert, while David Bowie appeared in a patterned silk dress on the cover of his 1971 album 'The Man who sold the World'. Both men, particularly Bowie, experimented with androgynous fashion styles throughout the 1970s. [22][23][24]
However, the furthest most men went in the 1960s in adopting feminine attire were velvet trousers, flowered or frilled shirts, ties, and long hair.[25]
In the 1970s, David Hall, a former research engineer at the Stanford Research Institute (SRI), actively promoted the use of skirts for men, appearing on both
In the early 1980s Boy George of successful pop group Culture Club brought androgynous dressing to a wide audience, wearing long skirts or dresses, makeup and long hair. [27][28]
1985 the French
In 2008 in France, an association was created to help spur the revival of the skirt for men.[34] Hot weather has also encouraged use. In June 2013, Swedish train drivers won the right to wear skirts in the summer when their cabins can reach up to 35 °C (95 °F),[35] whilst in July 2013, parents supported boys wearing skirts at Gowerton Comprehensive School in Wales.[36]
America is also not without its own contemporary advocates of skirts as menswear. One male blogger denies that skirts are exclusively feminine garments and suggests that the prevailing societal view reflects a "symbology of power" that persisted even in wake of the women's liberation movement.[37] He suggests an apparent causality paradox in the perception of skirts as exclusively womenswear: "are skirts perceived as feminine because women wear them or do women wear them because skirts are perceived as feminine?"[38] Though lamenting the lack of skirts designed specifically for men, he discusses in detail how to "advance a viewpoint of masculine aesthetics" in his how-to guide for men.[38] Other internet denizens echo these sentiments (with varying degrees of anonymity) in the "Skirt Cafe" internet forum "dedicated to exploring, promoting and advocating skirts and kilts as a fashion choice for men."[39] The forum's moderators conspicuously assert that "this is NOT a transvestite or crossdresser forum. We are committed to a fundamentally masculine gender identity."[40]
Metropolitan Museum of Art exhibition
In 2003, the
The exhibition display pointed out the lack of a "natural link" between an item of clothing and the masculinity or femininity of the wearer, mentioning the kilt as "one of the most potent, versatile, and enduring skirt forms often looked upon by fashion designers as a symbol of a natural, uninhibited, masculinity". It pointed out that fashion designers and male skirt-wearers employ the wearing of skirts for three purposes: to transgress conventional moral and social codes, to redefine the ideal of masculinity, and to inject novelty into male fashion. It linked the wearing of men's skirts to youth movements and countercultural movements such as punk, grunge, and glam rock and to pop-music icons such as Boy George, Miyavi and Adrian Young.[42] Many male musicians have worn skirts and kilts both on and off stage. The wearing of skirts by men is also found in the goth subculture.
Elizabeth Ellsworth, a professor of
The exhibition itself attempted to provoke visitors into considering how, historically, male-dress codes have come to this point and whether in fact a trend towards the wearing of skirts by men in the future actually exists. It attempted to raise challenging questions of how a simple item of dress connotes (in Ellsworth's words) "huge ramifications in meanings, behaviours, everyday life, senses of self and others, and configurations of insider and outsider".[42]
Other exhibitions
A number of men's skirts and skirted garments featured in the 2022 exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London entitled Fashioning Masculinities: the art of menswear,[44][45] which illustrated the history of men's fashion in western Europe, and its relationship to perceptions of masculinity, using historical and contemporary material.
Contemporary styles
The wearing of skirts, kilts, or similar garments on an everyday basis by men in Western cultures is an extremely small minority.[
In addition, since the mid-1990s, a number of clothing companies have been established to sell skirts specifically designed for men. These include Macabi Skirt in the 1990s, Menintime in 1999, Midas Clothing in 2002[52] and Skirtcraft in 2015.[53]
In 2010, the fashion chain H&M featured skirts for men in its lookbook.[54]
In 2018, Zara added a skirt for men in its Reshape collection.[55]
In 2023, the fashion chain Horsmens Fashion featured skirts for men in its lookbook.[56]
Wicca and neo-paganism
In
In non-Western cultures
Outside Western cultures, male clothing includes skirts and skirt-like garments.[59] One common form is a single sheet of fabric folded and wrapped around the waist, such as the dhoti, veshti or lungi in India, and the sarong in Southeast Asia. In Myanmar both women and men wear a longyi, a wraparound tubular skirt that reaches to the ankles for women and to mid-calf for men.[60] There are different varieties and names of sarong depending on whether the ends are sewn together or simply tied. There is a difference in the way a dhoti and lungi is worn. While a lungi is more like a wrap around, wearing the dhoti involves the creation of pleats by folding it. A dhoti also passes between the legs making it more like a folded loose trouser rather than a skirt.
In
The Samoan Lavalava is a wraparound "skirt". These are worn by men, women and children. The women's lavalava pattern usually have either traditional symbols and/or a flower (frangipani) pattern. The men's lavalava have only traditional symbols. A blue lavalava is the official skirt for the police officers uniform of Samoa.
In
For the
The Pacific
In China, skirts that are called qun (裙) or chang (裳) in Chinese were also worn by men, as well as robes known as paofu and shenyi, from ancient times until the end of the Qing dynasty in 1911. The Qin warriors of the first dynasty of Imperial China, wore a skirt-like tunic and a protective cuirass of bronze plates as can be seen on the excavated figures of the famous Terracotta Army; the entertainers figures together with the Terracotta Army also wore short skirts varying from knee-length to mid-thighs.[68] Portraits and statues of the revered Chinese scholar, Confucius show him wearing ample, enveloping silk robes.[69]
In Japan there are two types of the
In popular culture
One notable example of men wearing skirts in fiction is in early episodes of the science fiction TV program Star Trek: The Next Generation. The uniforms worn in the first and second season included a variant consisting of a short sleeved top, with attached skirt. This variant was seen worn by both male and female crew members. The book The Art of Star Trek explained that "the skirt design for men 'skant' was a logical development, given the total equality of the sexes presumed to exist in the 24th century."[71] However, perhaps reflecting the expectations of the audience, the "skant" was dropped by the third season of the show.
Other examples
- The Legend of Zelda series often wears a long tunic
Dance
In some Western dance cultures, men commonly wear skirts and kilts. These include a broad range of professional dance productions where they may be worn to improve the artistic effect of the choreography,
See also
- Breeching (boys)
- Women wearing pants
References
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- ^ Boucher, Francois (1987): 20,000 Years of Fashion: The History of Costume and Personal Adornment. New York: Harry N. Abrams
- ^ The Bible: Genesis 12:4–5
- ^ Roberts, J.M. (1998): The Illustrated History of the World. Time-Life Books. Volume 1. p. 84
- ^ Rief Anawalt, Patricia (2007): The Worldwide History of Dress. London: Thames & Hudson. p. 22
- ^ Barber, Elisabeth J.W. (1991): Prehistoric Textiles: The Development of Cloth in the Neolithic and Bronze Ages with Special Reference to the Aegean. Princeton: Princeton University Press. p. 12.
- ^ Rief Anawalt, Patricia (2007): The Worldwide History of Dress. London: Thames & Hudson. p. 25
- ^ Rief Anawalt, Patricia (2007): The Worldwide History of Dress. London: Thames & Hudson. p. 24
- ^ Rief Anawalt, Patricia (2007): The Worldwide History of Dress. London: Thames & Hudson. p. 88
- ^ Rief Anawalt, Patricia (2007): The Worldwide History of Dress. London: Thames & Hudson. p. 89
- ^ Koch-Mertens, Wiebke (2000): Der Mensch und seine Kleider: Die Kulturgeschichte der Mode bis 1900. Düsseldorf Zürich. Artemis & Winkler, p. 114.
- ^ Tortora, Phyllis et al. (2014): Dictionary of Fashion. New York: Fairchild Books. p. 11.
- ^ Koch-Mertens, Wiebke (2000): Der Mensch und seine Kleider: Die Kulturgeschichte der Mode bis 1900. Düsseldorf Zürich. Artemis & Winkler, pp. 156–162.
- ^ Koch-Mertens, Wiebke (2000): Der Mensch und seine Kleider: Die Kulturgeschichte der Mode bis 1900. Düsseldorf Zürich. Artemis & Winkler, p 130
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At Seattle's Fremont Market, men are often seen sporting the Utilikilt
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They've become a common sight around Seattle, especially in funkier neighborhoods and at the city's many alternative cultural events.
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Mackay is amazed at the amount of kilts he sees in Seattle. "I actually see more people wearing kilts in Seattle than I did when I lived in Scotland," he marvels.
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