Utility skirts

“Here, mention should be made of the constant interplay between love and the desire for clothes, insatiable,” writes Annie Ernaux in Getting Lost. In the grip of a love affair, she shops “thinking about the caresses of the night before and dreaming of the ones to follow.” Her closet fills up with “skirt suits and blouses bought for a man…pointless clothes, worn only for the sake of fashion, in other words, for nothing.”

Clothes bought for love are never strictly utilitarian. My wardrobe proliferates with crop tops, silk shorts, a sheer body suit, a pink silk slip I bought to psych myself up to ask someone out (he responded ‘heyyy’ which put the purchase in perspective). Most of these can’t be repurposed as work clothes, which is the utilitarian alternative. But work clothes are also bought for nothing, worn for nothing. Your job won’t love you back. Maybe neither will your lover but at least that one is worth trying for.

In pursuit of both desire and utilitarianism, mini skirts are the most versatile item of clothing. They have of course taken the fashion world by storm after Miu Miu models walked down the runway in shorn-off mini skirts, which looked like they had been hastily cropped last minute to be shorter and then again shorter. The viral one is belted, slung off the model’s hips, and lined at random with white cotton to mimic boxer shorts peeping through. But my favorite is the one FKA Twigs modeled at Paris Fashion Week, which is made out of a silky black fabric instead of the twill of the original, and has huge drooping pockets on the front of the skirt that almost look like giant bows at first glance. It’s almost a cargo skirt - you imagine you could fit a lot in those pockets - but it’s also aggressively impractical. The fake boxers aren’t really shorts (this isn’t a skort, god forbid) and it’s so short that it feels definitely risky. It’s also incredibly low-slung although Twigs wore it with a button down and a cable knit sweater, cosplaying dark academia.

After the skirt debuted, I looked at Miu Miu knockoffs for a few months unhappily and obsessively. There are endless variations of it now all over the internet, in different shapes and styles and lengths and rises. Finally, I bought a Korean version in navy utility twill with minimal pleating and a shorn off white lining. It’s so boxy it feels modest, almost severe. That’s the secret of a good mini skirt. It’s an interplay of straight cut lines and a lot of skin. Work and play all merged into one.

The micro mini skirt is controversial because it ostensibly represents the violent resurgence of diet culture. To be fair, Miu Miu is to blame for their waifish styling. Their skirt managed to be sexless on the runway, a fashion moment for fashion girls - an astonishing achievement. Out in the world, the mini skirt is sexy and to the point, universally flattering. Unlike the tennis skirt, which has inevitable shades of schoolgirl uniforms and lingering overtones of creepiness, the a-line mini skirt is solidly an everyday adult uniform.

“Puss in boots / mini skirt” sings Isabella Lovestory in her new song “Colocho” where she describes getting eaten out while on a horse. “If you wear a short enough skirt,” writes Dorothy Parker, “the party will come to you.” In the 1960s, women who wore mini skirts in the United Kingdom were known as “Ya-Ya girls” because shouting “yeah yeah” at them was a popular form of street harassment. André Courrèges and Mary Quant are among the designers often credited with inventing or popularizing the garment, but I like to think that the girls did that themselves. It’s easy to trim your hemline, the most basic form of alteration.

In the popular imagination, consumerism fills the void of not being in love. In Sex and the City, Carrie famously turns to shopping when she’s lonely, bored, or broken hearted. The point is driven home in Season 6 when her pumps are stolen at a shoes-off house party, and the married host refuses to reimburse her the $485 cost of a pair of Manolos. When Carrie points out she used to spend that much on shoes, the host retorts that she has other expenses now, that she’s outgrown shopping. Frivolity is associated with being single here, the wayward luxury of a woman who hasn’t settled down. But maybe that’s missing the point. In a sternly cut mini skirt, you can go to work down bad and daydream all afternoon, like Annie Ernaux, secure in the secret knowledge of wanting.