Skirts for Men? A Short History.

There was a time, millennia ago, when pretty much all clothing was unisex – not because of any cultural or philosophical standards, but simply because of desperate, practical reasons. Men and women wore the same animal skins not to look good but to keep the cold of the night away. In time, cutting, then textile was invented, creating a new form of covering one’s body up. Then, style was born, then fashion. The earliest of clothes, while they did have some differences, were, at least to today’s eyes, quite similar when it came to men’s clothes vs. women’s clothes. Just look at the sarong, a piece of clothing common in Southeast Asia or the toga, a traditional Roman garment worn by men and women alike. In Europe, though, the garments worn by men and women have slowly grown very different, giving birth to long-standing traditions and standards that even today’s gender-fluid clothing  lines fail to break.

 

 

However, what is often misunderstood when it comes to the evolution of fashion is that the different clothes for men and women were developed in order to serve different needs, both in terms of body structure and in terms of activities.

 

But history has recorded many skirt-like pieces of clothing worn by men.

The ancient Roman legions’ uniforms included clothing that was very similar to what we would call today a skirt. It is said that when the Romans first encountered trousers (braccae) in Gaul, the historic area in modern-day France inhabited by Celtic tribes, they considered them unmanly.

 

 

In the Middle Ages, the majority of Europeans in the areas with a moderate climate preferred garments similar to the dresses we know today. These were worn by both sexes – this “trend” still has remnants today, in the form of the tunics worn by Catholic monks to this day. Those worn by men were usually shorter at the bottom, and those worn by women often had more decorative prints. Otherwise, these pieces of clothing were pretty much the same. In time, the dresses worn by men became shorter, leaving more room to the trousers and tights that emerged around this time, while women’s robes grew in length, becoming the skirts we know today.

 

In more modern times, men slowly relegated their “skirts”, leaving them to their female partners, while they transitioned to suits, shirts, and ties. The only skirt-like pieces of men’s clothing that survived the “Great Masculine Renunciation” (as English psychologist John Flügel called the transition of men from skirts to trousers) were the Scottish traditional kilt and the “fustanella”, a pleated piece of clothing now worn by the Greek “evzonoi” (infantry) and the Albanian Royal Guard. By the middle of the 20th century, male skirts have completely vanished, being completely replaced by suits.

 

The unisex fashion movement that emerged in the 1960s made an attempt to “eliminate the sartorial differences” between men and women. This, in turn, mostly meant women wearing men’s clothes, like pants and shirts, and not the other way around, even though many men adopted feminine elements of style such as long hair. This doesn’t mean that there were no attempts to bring them back. In the 1970s, Stanford researcher David Hall advocated men to wear skirts as a far more practical attire at warmer climates. In 1985, famous French fashion designer Jean-Paul Gaultier created his first male skirt, and his example was followed by other famous designers like Giorgio Armani, Kenzo, and others. Still, the male population of the Western hemisphere leans against the revival of the male skirt, considering it an exclusively female piece of clothing.

What needs be pointed out in a very strong manner is that the “skirts” men used to wear in the past were not considered womenswear which males had adopted. They were simply men’s items, as we can see from their cuts. Kilts today are made for male bodies and thus, it would be wrong to assume that men in the past were more open to what some would call today “gender-bending” attire. Today, the fashion is for men to wear women’s clothes, but it needs to be stressed that kilts and other skirt-like garments men wore in the past were in no way associated with womenswear – they were the suits, tracksuits and military gear of their age. They were simply more practical for the time, given the means they had to construct fabrics (pants would have been very difficult to wear in Roman times, given that fabrics were heavy and construction was not very polished) and wearing pants would have caused more harm than help, which is no longer the case today.

 

Fraquoh and Franchomme

 

 

 

 

 

Further reading:

Men and feminine clothes: A dichotomy?

Should the meaning of menswear be redefined?

The double meaning of androgyny in fashion

Men and the color Pink: A cultural history

Women wearing men’s clothes: What do you think?

Would you wear women’s jeans?

P.S. We want to hear from you! What do you think of the history of men wearing skirts? Do you like the idea of “skirts” making a come-back? Why? Share your feedback, questions or thoughts in the comments below! For more articles on style, fashion tips and cultural insights, you can subscribe to Attire Club via e-mail or follow us on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram!