skirtcafe.org

Somewhere, in one of these threads someone put forth the idea of looking at women's clothing to the develop a masculine style. As I recall, the idea was dismissed.

I'd just like to add a couple of ideas to ponder.

As woemn were coming out from under the "woman's place is in the home" ethic and entering or re-entering the workforce, they had to develop styles that would work in business. The housedress would not do, nor would pinafores and sometimes Sunday dress was far to formal for the workplace.

For me, my school girl clothes were to immature for a professional workplace, so I took notice of men's suits, specifically how jackets and vests were cut.

I took the ideas and adapted them for myself: impeccable tailoring, sometimes using mens suiting, pockets and a skirt style that coordinated with the jacket and vest style.

What I came out with was definitely feminine. I had to adjust the jackets and vests to fit my curves and had to alter the internal structures for teh same reason. [Internally the tailoring in a fine men's jacket has interfacing and padding to round out a flat chest]

As you develop a professional skirted look, try looking at traditionally/classically designed women's suits. In this case, you'd be looking to see how various styles of skirts coordinate with jackets

It might have been me. I pored over images of women's clothing looking for key elements that would be usable in a male context.

Men's formal wear is ridiculous in terms of complexity and padding. I despise shoulder pads, and yet I have never seen a suit without them. makes me look like a football player, and they show if poorly fitted. yuck. The traditional armscye of a man's coat is so impractical you cannot raise your arm to shoulder height without ruining the line of your suit or tearing a seam, basically a strait jacket...you can't sit with the jacket done up, you can;t move your arms above your shoulders, mindless designs...

The ladies skirt suit is to my mind an adaptation of male wear into the feminine mode, the trick is to transition back without losing the whole look to tackiness.

AMEN!

Just as I had to adapt men's wear to my form, so I believe that designers for mens clothing need to address problems in the design of traditional menswear, then add the design of complimentary skirts.

In moving to this new design esthetic I believe we need to look at modifications to both mens and womens clothing that make them more wearable and moveable with the wearers movements. I'm primarily addressing professional wear

BrotherTailor wrote:Men's formal wear is ridiculous in terms of complexity and padding. I despise shoulder pads, and yet I have never seen a suit without them. makes me look like a football player, and they show if poorly fitted. yuck. The traditional armscye of a man's coat is so impractical you cannot raise your arm to shoulder height without ruining the line of your suit or tearing a seam, basically a strait jacket...you can't sit with the jacket done up, you can;t move your arms above your shoulders, mindless designs...

Let's take a hypothetical case here -- a "hyper-masculine" one if you may. If one cannot wield a weapon (be it a sword or a pistol) when wearing any sort of rig, can we call it that outfit a "ridiculous design"? I submit, "Yes." I don't do so for reasons of overt threat of physical violence; I do so because the design of the garment itself is needlessly constraining.

Range of motion is fundamental to the human form; if a garment too tightly constrains the motions of the body, then it's flawed. I know full well that the next inbound argument will specify the corset as needlessly constraining, but that particular garment (if well designed and engineered) doesn't affect the range of motion that our appendages may describe. Badly done, or done for reasons of vanity alone, speaks to a different argument. Interestingly, I feel far freer in the sense of movement whilst wearing a skirt. I find that trousers bind when it's least wanted; skirts don't seem to.

Continuing on the theme of "hyper-masculinity", I shoot recreationally, pistol mainly, and whilst I'm not as good as I'd like to be, I can usually hit what I'm aiming at. It's also a darned good education that no matter how much I'd really like having a billow of lace at my wrists, it'd be a really bad idea in the presence of high-speed machinery. (One, however, can fence with such fashion flair without much worry; with swordplay there's nothing much going on at the wrist that fabric would impede. It may be against the rules, however.)

Leaving behind the "hyper-masculine" bits, I can't for the life of me see why skirts for men can't be done well; done tastefully; done artfully; and, most importantly, done functionally. In the "guy world" anything less is quite likely a "non starter". It's got to "work".