CRITICS' CHOICES After the Shows, Looks to Watch By THE NEW YORK TIMES Published: March 16, 2004 ix months from now, when the new fall clothes and accessories land in stores, you'll be an expert on the shrug, the tea-cozy capelet and the "new eccentricity." So let's not go there. Let's consider a few trends from the shows that are likely to get under a woman's skin, induce a little longing and curiosity while flagrantly picking her pocket. Here, then, is a glimpse at the pencil skirt (fashion's new fanny pack), the latest vintage cult contender and one designer's bid for a 21st-century silhouette. Stepping Smartly Out of a Noir Movie The director John Waters has a habit of saying that the reason the hair above his lip is referred to as a pencil mustache is that he draws it on every day with a pencil. The origin of the phrase pencil skirt is about that literal. Encarta explains blandly that the pencil skirt is a short straight skirt, and an earnest 1939 fashion reference book called "The Language of Fashion" elaborates minutely by describing it as an article of clothing that has a "straight, slim silhouette." But dictionary definitions fail to capture the essence of this simple cloth cylinder. Words do not do justice to the way a pencil skirt seems to give classical structure to a woman's outline and to add a sexy geometry that enfolds the hips, elongates the legs and conveys a fetishistic element by deliberately restricting the scope of a stride. Pencil skirts always seemed to be the garment of choice among film noir gals, with their aura of careerism, sexual enterprise and tough-talking modernity. The pencil skirt seems in that sense reminiscent of the past. For more or less the same reason, it can be thought of as a very contemporary item of fashion — or so one was bound to conclude after watching scores of pencil skirts parade down catwalks in three cities during the just-ended round of fashion shows for fall 2004. Marc Jacobs showed beautiful prim pencil skirts both for his own show in New York and also in his Paris collection for Louis Vuitton. Ralph Lauren presented skirts that made it possible to use the words slinky and tweed in the same sentence without risking ridicule. Michael Kors sent the model Karolina Kurkova swiveling down the runway wearing a pencil skirt in crocodile for his last show at Celine. Patrick Robinson mined the 1950's Ivy League fantasia that was "Mona Lisa Smile" to produce the sort of skirts one can easily imagine Mary McCarthy having worn to cut a brainy swath through the male population at the Partisan Review. Tom Ford made pencil skirts so tight they were practically hobbles and placed them at the center of his seasonally reimagined picture of what Yves Saint Laurent represents. Worn with satin jackets that had pagoda shoulders, the skirts induced a certain melancholy in viewers who were forced to reflect on the reality that this was Mr. Ford's final season for that fashion establishment, a fact of which even long-haul truckers must by now be aware. In Milan, Miuccia Prada took pencil skirts and interspersed them with shirtwaist-style dresses on models who, in either outfit, brought to mind a naughty librarian who perhaps moonlights in a house of domination. The slightly disheveled styling Ms. Prada favors was offset by the taut shapes of the narrow pencil skirts, which strained against the womens' legs as they moved. The pencil skirt "looks much newer than pants," said Kal Ruttenstein, the fashion director of Bloomingdale's. He was not alone among retailers in finding in this particular item of clothing one of the "key stories for fall," to use the lingo of the trade. "When we were in Paris," Mr. Ruttenstein added, "we were going around to a variety of showrooms looking at sweaters, fur trims, beads and all the twin sets that we'll be carrying next season. And every time the mannequin would put on pants or jeans, things just looked ordinary." It was only when the models slipped on a pencil skirt beneath their cashmere twin sets, the retailer added, that their molecules rearranged themselves in an irresistible way. "It got sexy and intriguing and very new," Mr. Ruttenstein said. GUY TREBAY THE NEW YORK TIMES 3/16/04
a popular trend with the young crowd is wearing pencil skirts topped by vintage slips or over jeans, I also saw a post about this in the VCA board as you were
Hmmm....I've seen the slips or vintage dresses worn over jeans, but not the skirts - you'd think that would be awfully constricting. Sue
