What If You Wore Your Skirt Like a T-Shirt?

→ Fashion Prompt is a weekly series where I entice your curiosity about fashion through an excerpt, quote, photo or other piece of media that you may have saved, scrolled past or forgotten about.

Years ago, I wrote in my notes app: “How can I wear a skirt casually?!”

I was meditating on the topic of skirts because, simply put: I wanted to wear them more. This was a clear, personal style desire that I was having trouble manifesting through actual outfits. And I couldn’t figure out why. Because at the same time I was rekindling my love for skirts, I was also accepting a more casual and utalitarian side of my style.

So a part of me kept asking: can both exist?

Obviously, these meditations (and lots of outfit trial and error) eventually landed on a resounding yes.

Now, I treat my favorite pleated skirts more casually than even a pair of jeans.

This passed week, I came across a clip of Miuccia Prada where she said:

“For me, a skirt is like a T-shirt […] It can be as much eccentric but it doesn’t change.”

The words are simple, but they pack a punch for me. It’s no surprise that this is the same mind that gave us some of the most pivotal skirt designs in the history of fashion.

And there’s something so beautiful about viewing a skirt in this way. An item that far too often, becomes the piece forgotten in the back of the closet or overlooked for being “too much”.

One of the main ways I get dressed is by playing with contrasts. If one element is casual, it invites another to be bit dressier, edgier, more embelished. Or vice versa. For a while, I was putting the skirt in the strict “dressier/less casual” category. This in many ways, limited my style greatly!

Because why is the instinct to view a skirt as only the “fancier” option? They’ve always been framed as more precious, less casual. Sometimes we like to put clothing pieces — not just skirts — into boxes in our wardrobe that aren’t needed. Viewing a skirt “as a T-shirt” like Miuccia said, gives the skirt a new type of power in your closet.

Because, what happens when we put our clothes into unneeded categories? Well, we wear them less. We give them limits. We forget them. We wear our clothes less. We develop this sort of sartorial scarcity mindset around them. And sure, there’s nothing wrong with keeping an heirloom dress or a statement top more precious, but those pieces should be the minority, not a majority.

And that’s what makes Miuccia’s point of view so eye-opening. Skirts can have as many lives in your wardrobe as a T-shirt does. Because for both, when you find the right silhouette, material, cut, it can be repeated with endless creativity and ease.

Digital Commonplace Notebook

• When is the last time you wore a skirt?

• Do you associate skirts more with formal clothing or casual clothing?

• What makes skirts feel constricting vs. freeing?

• What makes a skirt “casual”?

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