Moving from Quicksilver to Gold in my life, seeking my vocation, developing my plan of life, and discovering what is essential to that plan of life even extends to my clothing.  Clothing expresses much.  It can be business, formal, casual and even a mix of these and still express something unique about the person wearing it. For me, a major part of moving from Quicksilver to Gold is found in my wardrobe, especially in my skirts.

Skirts delight the wearer if that wearer is anything like me.  I love the variety possible with skirts and delight in patterns from the Victorian walking skirt to the circle-and-a-half skirt, to the skirt with the yoke and zipper, or the skirt with the draw-string top. I delight in wearing skirts. Skirts with gores, skirts with godets, skirts that drape and flair from the hip with wavy hems, even hems, or sharp jagged hems, all are fun.  Skirts are a delight.

A skirt is casual enough for a La Leche League meeting or the park, yet dressy enough for participating in Mass or meeting friends for lunch. In my last pregnancy skirts (with drawstring waists) carried me though the hot summer months in comfort and continued to fit long after other clothing became too restrictive.

Long skirts are the most fun.  I define a long skirt as any skirt that falls an inch or more below the knee. Mine range from that inch below the knee clear to nearly skimming the floor.   Long skirts swish satisfactorily about the calves and this is, for me, one of their best features.  Cotton is comfortable and wears well on a daily basis but heavier fabrics drape and swish with a richness that makes them a pleasure to wear on more serious occasions.

The skirt also encourages the wearer to remember she is a woman and to enjoy that fact about herself.  The common cultural push is for women to be gender neutral as if there were something not quite right about being female. Even the suits women wear, often with a snug, short, pencil skirt, suggest that being female is something to play down, to bind up, or to avoid.   A woman in a skirt that flows confronts that attitude and declares freely her fabulous femininity even when she wears the skirt as part of a suit for work.

Skirts require the wearer to adapt a bit.  The trouser walk is fine for when wearing trousers but in a long skirt can prove to be a problem.  Wearing a skirt lends itself to shortening the length of step and suddenly walking with the shorter stride far more normal for our heights. Shortening our stride that little bit takes some of the strain off our lower backs.  Women are built to sway as they walk and this sway is eliminated by the excessively long stride that many women develop to take advantage of trousers.  Less sway is contrary to our structure and leads to unnatural tightness in the hips and lower back.  Why do we do this to ourselves?  Generally it is simply because we wear trousers and take on a longer stride to keep up with the men around us. Adapting to a skirt has helped me to change the way I move in a good way.

Posture becomes more important as the skirt gets longer, a skirt does not trip the wearer who keeps an upright posture.  Posture is most important with the longest skirts.  Even a little slouch drops the front hem and in a floor length skirt dropping the front hem means stepping on it.  Practicing good posture in a floor length skirt helps make it habit. It is also good for core muscle toning and for the health of the entire spine.  The longer I wear the longer skirts, the better my habits of posture become and the more naturally I wear the skirts.

Wearing a skirt, especially one of the longer ones, takes practice. It is a skill that women have employed for generations and which have fallen out of favor and should be revived.  It is sad to see a woman in a movie wearing a long skirt and still trying to walk like a man.  It is also sad to see a woman in a long skirt LIFT the front of the skirt when going down the stairs. It is the back of the long skirt you need to lift slightly going down the stairs so that the person behind you doesn’t step on it.

Skirts have replaced trousers in my wardrobe completely.  At the moment I don’t even own a pair of blue jeans and at one time that was nearly all I did own.  I’ll visit this subject again soon.