Planning My Men's Skirt Project

This afternoon I swung by the Comme des Garcons store, which is just a few blocks from my apartment.

The store is set up like a space-age art gallery and it's more than a little intimidating (to me).  But the staff people seem happy to answer questions and talk about the clothes.  (What else do they have to do all day except chat -- and make sure the the hangers are perfectly spaced between each other?)

The storefront

Friends, I couldn't even tell which areas in the store were for men and which were for women, and I felt like a rube asking, but what are you going to do?  It wasn't obvious.

The young male sales assistant who helped me was wearing the skirt posted up top, only with black leggings (not quite tights), colored socks and black shoes.  The ensemble looked great on him and it made me want to give it a shot myself.  Upon closer inspection (on the hanger, not the guy) I noticed that what I was really looking at were pleated culottes made in a lightweight wool blend suiting.  If I didn't want to draft culottes myself I could probably use Butterick 6164 (the version on the far right).



A little online research yields a lot of this kind of men's skirt/culotte/kilt thing, usually -- though not always -- shown with leggings (to keep it looking somewhat masculine, I'm guessing).

I think I could recreate the Givenchy cotton kilt below pretty easily, and for a whole lot less than $720.  I bet you could too.







Other designers showing skirts include Rick Owens, Thamanyah (the white skirt below) Yohji Yamamoto, and just about any designer who aspires to the avant-garde.  Mind you, this has been going on for more than a few years now.   You can read a few interesting articles about it here and here.







I'm excited about this project and I hope you'll come along for the ride.

Have a great day, everybody!