What the Bust Out Your Man-Gams!
Straight outta Tacoma comes CitySkirt, devoted to bringing the “popular European fashion trend” of man-skirts to North America. “It’s a different way of thinking about what a man wears and how he looks,” says the company’s mission statement. “It’s about style and comfort. It’s about the freedom that a skirt provides to the wearer. Sophisticated or relaxed, casual or formal: It’s CitySkirt.”
I’m all for freedom and style and comfort, but the fact remains that, when I see a man in a skirt—be it a Microsoftie in a Utilikilt or the above mannequin in a CitySkirt—I think, “He’s got to be kidding.” Not that kidding is a bad thing. But the male skirt-wearer is usually NOT kidding, and the psychic energy expended in the silent back-and-forth between wearer and viewer—”Is he kidding?”/”No, I am not kidding, I am a man in a skirt”/”Well alrighty then”/Swish swish swish—is enough to make me want to yell, “Dude, put on some pants.”
But this is my problem, not CitySkirts’s, and I wish them all the luck in the world.
FYI: Some of their skirts even have locally-flavored names, such as the Rainier and the Pacific. However, it must be said that any man wearing the Renton skirt in the city of Renton would be dragged to death behind a truck.
And does the mannequin really need to have lipstick on?