Mini skirts of cotton galore.
Mini skirts of cotton galore.
On pleats, A-line, & kilt-inspired cotton minis from the suburbs of Portland, OR.
You can’t talk about the mini skirt without acknowledging Jane Birkin’s influence. We lost a true style inspiration and artistic beauty this week. Rest in peace to French fashion legend Jane Birkin.
Above: Jane Birkin in a presumably cotton gingham mini skirt in La Piscine, 1969.
It’s hard to go back to the fabric-grazing-your-inner-thighs of shorts after wearing a care-free skirt, especially on a hot summer day. And while the woolen kilts of fall/winter are easily approachable, I want to discuss + style the summer counterpart composed of cotton.
Skirts, and especially miniskirts, can get a reputation for being solely for the hyper-girly (maybe we’re all a bit marred by the Mean Girls era tutu-like borderline costume mini skirts) but if you ask me, it’s all in the styling. And as we’ve been witnessing, men are following suit in skirt participation (of course Scottish men have long been acquainted with skirts’ privileges).
A$AP Rocky at the Met Gala, 2023 sporting a Gucci kilt.
I’ve split up cotton mini skirts into three categories: kilt/wrap, pleated, & A-line carpenter/cargo. I personally believe these are the best silhouettes for a cotton mini skirt but they also happen to be what I have on hand 🙂.
I’m wearing thrifted knife pleated cotton twill mini skirt w/ thrifted T-shirt.
I CRACD myself and purchased some second hand & vintage items which had piled up at my parents house in time for my arrival in Oregon. So, there are some additional items in my outfits this week—I’m a new woman! I’m here for a month plus, and plan to do a little more vintage in-person shopping during that time to reeeeally get that suitcase(s) at capacity.
Pleats!
Let’s review knife & box pleats, the two most common kinds of pleats in skirts. A refresher on the definition of a pleat: it’s basically just a fold of fabric.
Knife pleat: a sharp pleat made in one direction, typically overlapping another pleat. Thom Browne is known for using an abundance of knife pleats in his skirts. Box pleats are very similar to knife pleats. The only difference is after the fabric is pleated in one direction, there is another pleat created in the opposite direction, creating a box/rectangular visual. This means that on the inside of the garment, the open portion of the two pleats face each other.
Both of the above pleat styles are typical for cheerleader skirts and create a nice A-line shape. When online shopping, you can type “knife pleated skirt”, for example, into your search function on eBay, etc. in order to narrow down specifics.
I’m wearing thrifted cotton plaid kilt (contains both box and knife pleats) & Marc Jacobs clown collar shirt. Not to be neglected is my Villeine wallet chain with accompanying charms!
The importance of clean finishes…
Another construction quality factor to be aware of is how the hem and interior waistband are finished. Below are examples of a non clean-finished and clean-finished seams on a hem/waistband. Besides the obvious reason that a garment with clean seam finishes along these seams lasts longer (it’s less prone to the hem popping out/fraying/coming apart), there are other reasons to shop for lovely interior finishings. For one, the wearer gets to enjoy the beautiful interior view :)…but also with a full skirt, others can see the hem in motion, so if the hem isn’t clean finished, the overlock edge (see below) will show—and this looks cheap, because it is! There are many ways to clean finish a hem or waistband seam; I’ve shown three below: binding, hem tape which covers the raw edge of the fabric, and double fold under topstitch.
Now that you are extra informed on what to look for on mini skirts’ construction, onto the shopping links.
I’m wearing a second hand Helmut Lang cotton poplin pleated wrap skirt with Villeine chainmail bra.
KILTS/WRAP MINI SKIRTS
Characters Dionne Davenport and Cher Horowitz in Clueless, 1995.
Burberry yellow/white gingham pleated wrap skirt sz S $82.50
Simone Rocha asymmetric pleated wrap look skirt taffeta this one isn't cotton it's acetate/poly $346
PLEATED MINISKIRTS
Zoe Kravitz in “High Fidelity”, 2020.
CARPENTER/CARGO MINI SKIRTS
Lastly, I’ve covered what I’m calling a carpenter mini skirt. This includes mini skirts in a simple, slight A-line silhouette, containing denim details. For denim elements, think zip fly or exposed zipper at center front, double needle topstitching, patch pockets and the like. Miu Miu immortalized the extreme mini carpenter style with their cotton gabardine iteration which had exposed pocketbags at the hem in Spring 2022 season.
I’m wearing second hand Theory cotton poplin carpenter mini with thrifted GILDAN sweatshirt. It’s freezing in the mornings and evenings in Oregon!
Nicole Kidman in the instantly viral Miu Miu mini skirt for Vanity Fair.
That’s it for this week on cotton minis. May we all reach, with the knowledge of its impossibility, for a Jane Birkin attitude to our personal style: elusive, original and timeless.