Designers are betting on men’s skirts as emerging fashion trend: ‘Very liberating’
Bro, that skirt is so chic!
Skirts are emerging as a new trend in menswear fashion, as designers reflect the new realities of a year under COVID-19 rules in their new collections.
According to The Guardian’s deputy fashion editor Priya Elan, the surprising new trend reflects how pandemic life has “unshackled men from their dress codes.”
Designers such as Stefan Cooke, Ludovic de Saint Sernin and Burberry have all included skirts or dresses in their upcoming fall/winter collections.
According to Women Wear’s Daily, Cooke’s Men’s Fall 2021 collection imagines a “world of men’s wear with discipline, intensity and commitment in dressing up to the nines.”
Cooke and his partner, Jake Burt, went through different phases when dealing with the new COVID-19 reality — which was reflected in their designs. While their spring collection reflected the easiness of work-from-home days, the label is now looking beyond the pandemic, and focusing on the silhouette for the fall.
One example, described by Vogue as an “English tweed varsity jacket–slash–minidress” took many hours of fitting and arguments to be completed, Cooke told reporters in a Zoom call.
The celebrated London-based menswear fashion designer had a bold prediction: Capes are the new T-shirts for the fall, and short skirts are in.
“Men in skirts is kind of a weird topic, but I think what’s good about these looks is that they feel really legitimately masculine, it doesn’t feel like you’ve taken a womenswear look and put it on a man which I think is quite nice. I also think they’re just really severe; we’ve tried this season to make super hard-hitting,” he said.
Ludovic de Saint Sernin, a Brussels-born designer who designs “for guys and girls, with many pieces designed without one gender in mind,” agreed.
“I love the idea of men in skirts, I find it very liberating,” he told The Guardian.
“It’s just really fun, I guess, being able to wear something that usually belongs to womenswear, and at the same time keeping the look believable on a man.”
One of his hard-to-make pieces, a Swarovski miniskirt called “Vichy,” takes “months and months” to be made, he told Vogue. But his clients — " they’re actually quite young men, whether they’re [from] Australia or Mexico” — don’t seem to care.
Burberry’s Creative Director Riccardo Tisci is also exploring the trend. Last month, as he unveiled the label’s menswear collection featuring pleated skirts and shirt dresses, he said that he wanted to “celebrate the freedom of expression.”
Mark Bryan, a 61-year-old Instagram influencer who identifies as “just a straight, married guy, (who) loves Porsches, beautiful women, and incorporating high heels and skirts into my daily wardrobe,” told Vogue Germany in an interview published Wednesday that “by breaking free from stereotypes, we are freeing ourselves from a great burden.”
According to GQ Australia, the idea of men rocking skirts on the fashion runways is not exactly new. Designers such as Yohij Yamamoto, Raf Simons and Jean-Paul Gaultier have already featured it in their ’90s collections. But its newest “surprising low-key” iteration is on the rise.
It is ideal for men who “see the skirt as a bold fashion frontier they can almost imagine conquering. Think of it as the missing link between the swishiest basketball short and the liberating expanse of a ballgown.”
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