A Brief History of Skirts

For today, the skirt is the subject of a women's wardrobe. The only exception is the kilt, and even then, the Scottish men do not wear it daily, but get it out of the cupboards on festive and memorable days. But at the dawn of humanity there was no division into male and female clothes . Ancient people covered only the lower half of the body, using for this purpose loincloths from the skins of dead animals or leaves of plants. It can be said that it was then that the history of the appearance of the skirt began.

The term "skirt", which originated from the Arabic word "jubba", for a long time meant knee-length clothing gathered at the gates and belted, as well as the underside of the dress. Only in the 15th-16th century did the skirt separate from the dress when they began practicing its cut apart from the bodice.

For the first few millennia, people were equal, so men, women, old people, and children dressed roughly the same way. But evolution does not stand still: personal conditions changed, moral, ethical and religious differences appeared, and clothing changed. As the ancient Greek and Roman history shows us, women did not have skirts in the modern sense of the word, they wore tunics without sleeves and raincoats. And men of those centuries long dress showed their importance and social status: young boys wore short clothes, rich and respected men - longer.

The further history of skirts confirms that the practice of demonstrating one's status with the help of clothing length was preserved in the following centuries. Only now women began to be engaged in this, after all, the skirt gradually moved to the women's wardrobe.

Moral and religious regulations forbade ladies to show their legs to others, all women began to wear dresses on the floor, but representatives of wealthy estates came to the aid of long trains. The church tried to show that before God all people are equal. Medieval religious figures did not care about the history of skirts, they declared the trains an invention of the devil and refused to release sins to all the ladies in "long-tailed" dresses. But, despite all prohibitions, the trains remained popular for several centuries. The history of the skirt briefly preserved information about the longest train in the world. Dress for the coronation of Queen Catherine II was supplemented with a seventy-meter "tail", which carried fifty pages.

But the fashion is changeable, and in the sixteenth century ladies begin to show off the pomp and width of their skirts. This style began to be called "verdugado", from the Spanish word "verdugo" - "hoop". It was the Spanish fashion designers who invented a hoop skeleton that made a voluminous skirt, but did not prevent women from moving relatively easily. At times, the outfits were so immense that the ladies squeezed into the doorways with difficulty.

The history of skirts does not stop there, the skeleton is replaced by numerous lower skirts. In the nineteenth century, invented crinoline and bustle. And the skirt in the form in which we know it, appeared only in the twentieth century. Mini, maxi, skirts with a cut, pencils and plisse - in the arsenal of modern women there is a huge variety of such seductive details of the wardrobe.