Skirting the Issue

Are We Ready for Men in Skirts?

By CHRIS SCHMIDT

A bout a month ago, I took a subway to Harlem for a Senegalese dinner. It was a wet and dreary October night; most New Yorkers were festooned in cheap black umbrellas and plastic ponchos. But all along 116th Street, dozens of Senegalese men congregated on the sidewalk and inside restaurants wearing exquisitely embroidered, ankle-length robes. The garments are called boubous and, with their shiny fabrics in jewel colors, they seemed to defy the weather even as they announced the regality of their wearers.

No boubous made it into the new exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum's Costume Institute, "Bravehearts: Men in Skirts," which opens today. Also absent from the show were the Chinese changshan and the thwab, the Middle Eastern version of the caftan.

That's a shame, for the most beautiful and surprising garments in this exhibit are those of non-Western countries. Of the five galleries, only one is given over to the such dress. There, the colorful Ghanian kente cloth, the elegant Moroccan caftan, and the British banyan (which dates to the 18th century, and was adapted from Indian sources) share space with contemporary updates by designers like Donna Karan and Giorgio Armani.

The show advances the argument that men wearing skirts is a sign of social advancement -- unisex dress being the last vanguard of a utopian,genderless society. But are men willing to make the leap to fullon skirts? One man at least -- soccer player David Beckham -- dares to bare. The jetsetting fashion plate appears in the show's catalog holding the hand of his wife, Victoria, and wearing a sleeveless black T-shirt and a printed sarong by Jean Paul Gaultier.

"The male skirt is always on the verge of arrival or widespread acceptance," boasts the wall text in the exhibit. This seems overly optimistic. Indeed, curator Andrew Bolton, in the accompanying catalog, interviews several designers of skirts for men who openly admit the limits of the garment's wearability. Paul Smith, designer of bespoke and fanciful menswear as well as the occasional sarong, says, "At the moment, the acceptability of sarongs for men is pretty much restricted to the beach. Outside of that context, they are seen as something a fashion victim would wear."

The show is sponsored by Mr. Gaultier, who, over the years, has designed a myriad of male skirts -- from the risque to the ecclesiastical -- with an eye towards provocation rather than social progress. But Mr. Bolton has also selected a small number of garments produced by various social groups, such as the Men's Dress Reform Party (founded in the 1930s) or BATT: Bravehearts Against Trouser Tyranny. One of the more thought-provoking claims these groups make is that non-bifurcated garments -- i.e., skirts and kilts -- are in fact better suited to men's anatomy than trousers. Never again, the BATT argues, will tailors have to ask men if they "dress left" or "dress right."

Yet, if the audience of the show is anything to judge by, BATT has a long way to go before accomplishing its mission. On the day of the opening, Mr. Bolton and Mr. Gaultier were ensconced in opposite corners of the exhibit, wearing -- not skirts, not kimonos, not kilts, not sarongs -- but plain old pants.

How could Mr. Gaultier, perhaps the most visible advocate of men's skirts (he once wore a micro-mini kilt to a televised awards show that rode up in back to reveal his white briefs) not wear one of his own designs? As Mr. Bolton points out in his catalog copy, designing skirts often does less for a designer's bank account than it does for his cachet. Designers, suggests Mr. Bolton, don't send skirts down the runway to change the way men dress, but merely to sell more trousers.