In this post: photography David Williams Topman//jacket vintage // leggings American Apparel skirt thrifted // shoes thrifted
Men in skirts. It’s a hot button issue that has people in the streets talking – how will we know who’s a woman and who’s a man anymore in this freaky deaky gender-bending upside-down world? The answer? You won’t! Muahahaha, the Gay Agenda strikes again! Soon there will no longer be ‘boy’ and ‘girl’ babies, just cribs labeled, ‘Jaden’ or ‘Roxx’.
Joke! But, seriously, there has been an increased public interest in men wearing skirts, if only because of the continued influence of Kanye West and his designer-dud-loving hip-hop contemporaries. When I last touched on this issue (Men Without Pants), I declared, “wearing a skirt isn’t emasculating because maybe looking ‘like a woman’, like looking ‘like a man’, isn’t something to be ashamed of – nor is it something defined by an article of clothing.” That statement still pretty well sums up my feelings on this issue, but now that I’m a convert myself, the absurdity of our social unease with men wearing skirts is more profoundly striking.
A skirt is, in terms of construction, an absurdly sexless garment. It’s a piece of f*cking fabric that you wrap around/pull up on your waist. Sure, they get more complicated, but not necessarily so. My friend Brandon, one of the most distinctive and honest dressers I know, recently wrote a great post about the societal implications of his sartorial preference for skirts, describing them as an empowering weapon against oppressive heteronormativity. My skirt-wearing has not gotten that far and doesn’t resonate with me so deeply (yet), but taking this chance, slight as it is, has left me feeling emboldened to explore my options outside of the prescriptive world of #menswear. Can I wear a dress? How? What is a dress? Why is a skirt? There’s a lot of layering potential my eyes have been opened to recently because of this – could I wear a dress over pants? A shirt over that? A blazer with a skirt? Understanding these items divorced from gender helps eliminate outdated connotations – that a man wearing women’s clothing is, “in drag,” or “cross dressing.” Those things are separate from this, but hoping the general public will comprehend that is…reaching.
But here’s what you really want to know…so I bought this tartan skirt for $12 a few months ago and have been struggling to figure out how best to wear it. It made its debut a few months back (check it out on Instagram , but hasn’t gotten much action since. I decided to give it another go during post-blizzard fashion week while shooting outside Lincoln Center. I was pretty miserably cold, but I managed to get photographed by BuzzFeed Shift (I’m number 24 on their list), so obviously I make great life choices. This second time around I’ve paired it with my super intense fringed leather biker jacket that I love so much, but have never shot for the blog before. I literally die for fringe, plus this S.O.B. has epaulets – be still my beating heart! Leggings are an obvious must when going sans pants in the dead of winter and I like the way my thrifted Bass platforms give the outfit a schoolgirl-gone-bad edge. One thing I want to make note of, in typing out my thoughts here – I’m indeed wearing a (vintage) size 12 woman’s skirt here, not a kilt, the difference being…I mean, IDK, but it’s not an authentic kilt. Also, can I get a hurrah for a half-thrifted half-vintage outfit that’s decidedly modern? That is all.
Click through to read about my inspirations for this post!
Or…from gay to Kimye! Marc Jacobs was big into skirt-wearing a few years ago, then Givenchy showed them, then Kanye West wore them. Also, a cute picture of models wearing kilts in an MJ ad and Gerard Butler proving that real men (?) wear kilts.