Hate the pencil skirt

Because your 2018 must have been as busy as ours and you might have missed a bit: this is one of our top scorers of the year. Just to dive in a little more.

If I may send one item of clothing to the Bermuda Triangle for a bite to swallow and a who-we'll-never-see-again, it is the pencil skirt. This sexist, boring straitjacket should be banished immediately to a desert island or some other place where the chances of it being seen by human eyes are negligible.

Yes yes, I hear you say: but the pencil skirt is always good and ever sexy, right? Even if the thighs are a little more generous?

Agreed. Agreed. But in the name of fashion, the pencil skirt has done its job and had its best day. Unless you rock it (rock the skirt) in a leather version or dare to style it with atypical pieces like a shirt from a hard rock band and a half-high boot with studs. I'd say put it in the mix with a white blouse and a tight-cut jacket, unless you want to pull off a huge Miss Ank pout and suddenly shed glasses and lose bun and turn out to be hiding a red bra under all the bravado.

Once upon a time, the pencil skirt wrote fashion revolution. Was it Jacques (Faith)? Was it Christian (Dior)? Either way, it found its origins in the mid-1940s. Not surprising because after a period of anxiety in which women took on men's work, people celebrated femininity. Christian Dior's New Look with its huge skirts and focus on the waist. Jacques Faith underlined the feminine with the tight pencil skirt that ended just over the knee. Jackie O was an avid wearer of this fashion invention.

But then was then and now is now. We are almost eighty years into our fashion evolution. We understand the culotte (he may not yet, but you do) and applaud the baggy trousers. Sexy is also an illusion, the comfort of wearing that makes feminine.

The pencil skirt has had its day. So one-way Bermuda Bahamas, as far as I'm concerned. Although it was very useful in some areas. To pick up another anecdote from the old box. Irene van de Laar once walked into the editorial office of Boulevard in a barely-there pencil skirt tied with a flexible button. ‘Sexy though,‘ said S, the executive producer. And easy, with a button like that. You can undo it in no time.’ This was in the pre-metoo era, that much is clear. Irene looked at him in surprise with a look of: what are you doing? It can just go up as well, you know.