Wiggle your way into the new pencil skirt
THE pencil skirt — for ever associated with Joan from Mad Men and her glorious curves, and Marilyn Monroe wiggling along the steam-filled platform in Some Like It Hot — is back.
And good news, this spring’s version has a modern, slouchier cut than its predecessors. As a rule of thumb; if you can’t stride across to the photocopier in the skirt, you are probably doing it wrong.
On the catwalks for spring, Gucci, Calvin Klein, Max Mara, Fendi, Prada and Victoria Beckham (herself an icon of pencil skirt chic) were among the many labels showing the slimline skirt.
To get a handle on the silhouette, it’s worth studying the shapes on Prada’s catwalk — you’ll see they are longer and roomier than pencil skirts of yore and styled with a certain boyish nonchalance.
For the new skirt-wearing muse, look no further than Meghan Markle, who chose a green take on the trend for her trip to Northern Ireland.
She wore it with a simple sweater and ever-so-slightly oversized coat, looking every inch the sleek, modern woman of purpose. The skirt, by Canadian label Greta Constantine, featured a tiny kick flare just below the knee, making it a ‘hobble skirt’, in fashion-speak.
As historians will tell you, the hobble is the progenitor of the pencil skirt.
It was invented, supposedly, when the first female airplane passenger Edith Berg took to the air in a Wright Brothers propellor plane, in 1908, and they tied a rope around her skirts to stop them being caught up in the machinery.
As the story goes, this image caught the imagination of the Parisian fashion designers and a new skirt shape was born.
FOR the classic pencil skirt we can thank Christian Dior, who produced beautiful narrow skirt suits in the late 1940s and early 1950s and created the definitive pencil in his 1954 H-line collection.
Given the ongoing fascination with the House of Dior, which has just celebrated its 70th anniversary, and the success of the recent film Phantom Thread, set in a couture house in 1954, it’s small wonder pencil skirts are in the fashion zeitgeist.
I’ve always been slightly scared of the pencil skirt. It’s just a shade too close to bodycon dressing for me. However, that all changed last summer when I bought a Boden Icons skirt: mid-calf length, front split, made from a heavy twill cloth and embellished with folkloric embroidery. Why? Because it is so flattering. The secret lies in the structure of the fabric. As Christian Dior might be inclined to comment (if he was alive today), a skirt that requires suction underwear to achieve a smooth line is not worth buying. In this vein, Alexa Chung’s fabulous front-split pencil in Prince of Wales check, a fabric trend which is going nowhere for autumn, has caught my eye (€325, net-a-porter.com). It is lined and would look equally good with a ribbed knit and a block heeled loafer as with a wow blouse and heels. On the High Street, I love Asos’s sidebuttoning version (€41.48, asos.com), which will be perfect for warm weather office dressing. Style it with a buttonthrough silk shirt and a mid-heeled sandal. What is the key to styling your pencil skirt so it looks fresh, not dated or vampy? On the shoe front, keep your heel height in check. On top, it’s all about ease. Think Lauren Hutton in a masculine/feminine shirt in the 1970s. Or refer to Meghan Markle, wearing a light knit that cocoons rather than hugs the body. When shopping for your new-look skirt, go for a style that puts you in mind an hourglass. But if it strays anywhere near Rizzo from Grease territory, step away from the rail.