People have variously attempted to promote the wearing of skirts by men in Western culture and to do away with this gender distinction albeit with limited general success and considerable cultural resistance.
The Kingdom of Sumer in Mesopotamia whose greatest achievement was the invention of writing recorded two categories of clothing. The ritual attire for men was a fur skirt tied to a belt called Kaunakes.
The term kaunakes, which originally referred to a sheep's fleece was later applied to the garment itself. The animal pelts originally used were replaced by kaunakes cloth, a textile that imitated fleecy sheep skin.[.Kaunakes cloth also served as a symbol in religious iconography, as the fleecy cloak ofSt. John theBaptist.
Depictions of kings and their attendants from the Old Assyrian Empire and Babylonia on monuments like the Black Obelisk of Salmanazar show men wearing fringed cloths wrapped around their sleeved tunics.
The innovative new techniques specially improved tailoring trousers and tights which designs needed more differently cut pieces of cloth than most skirts. “Real” trousers and tights increasingly replaced the prevalent use of the hose (clothing) which like stockings covered only the legs and had to be attached with garters to underpants or a doublet. A skirt-like garment to cover the crotch and bottom was no more necessary. In an intermediate stage to openly wearing trousers the upper classes favoured voluminous pantskirts and diverted skirts like the padded hose or the latter petticoat breeches.
This phenomenon the English psychologist John Flügel termed “The Great Masculine Renunciation”. Skirts were effeminized. “Henceforth trousers became the ultimate clothing for men to wear, while women had their essential frivolity forced on them by the dresses and skirts they were expected to wear”. By the mid-20th century, orthodox Western male dress, especially business and semi-formal dress, was dominated by sober suits, plain shirts and ties. The connotation of trousers as exclusively male has been lifted by the power of the feminist movement while the connotation of skirts as female is largely still existing leaving the Scottish kilt and the Albanian and Greek fustanella as the only traditional men′s skirts of Europe.
In the 1970s, David Hall, a former research engineer at the Stanford Research Institute (SRI), actively promoted the use of skirts for men, appearing on both The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson and the Phil Donahue Show. In addition, he was featured in many articles at the time. In his essay "Skirts for Men: the advantages and disadvantages of various forms of bodily covering", he opined that men should wear skirts for both symbolic and practical reasons. Symbolically, wearing skirts would allow men to take on desirable female characteristics. In practical terms, skirts, he suggested, do not chafe around the groin, and they are more suited to warm climates.
In 1985 the French fashion designerJean-Paul Gaultier created his first skirt for a men. Transgressing social codes Gaultier frequently introduces the skirt into his men′s wear collections as a means of injecting novelty into male attire, most famously the sarong seen on David Beckham. Other famous designers such as Vivienne Westwood, \Giorgio Armani, John Galliano, Kenzo, Rei Kawakubo and Yohji Yamamoto also created men's skirts.
In the US Marc Jacobs became the most prominent supporter of the skirt for men. The Milan men′s fashion shows and the New York fashion shows frequently show skirts for men. Jonathan Davis, the lead singer of Korn, has been known to wear kilts at live shows and in music videos throughout his 18-year career with that band. Mick Jagger from the Rolling Stones and Anthony Kiedis from the Red Hot Chili Peppers were photographed wearing dresses by Anton Corbijn. For an FCKH8 antidicrimmination campaign Iggy Pop was seen wearing a black dress and handbag.
Guns N' Roses' singer, Axl Rose, was known to wear men's skirts during the UseYour Illusion period. Robbie Williams and Martin Gore from Depeche Mode also performed on stage in skirts. During his Berlin time (1984–1985) Martin Gore was often seen in public wearing skirts. In an interview with the Pop Special Magazin (7/1985) he said: „Sexual barriers and gender roles are old fashioned and out. [...] I and my girlfriend often share our clothes and Make-up“. Brand Nubian Lord Jamar criticized Kanye West wearing skirts, saying that his style has no place in hip-hop.
In 2008 in France, an association was created to help spur the revival of the skirt for men. Hot weather has also encouraged use. In June 2013, Swedish train drivers won the right to wear skirts in the summer when their cabins can reach 35 °C (95 °F), whilst in July 2013, parents supported boys wearing skirts at Gowerton Comprehensive School in Wales.
In 2008 in France, an association was created to help spur the revival of the skirt for men. Hot weather has also encouraged use. In June 2013, Swedish train drivers won the right to wear skirts in the summer when their cabins can reach 35 °C (95 °F), whilst in July 2013, parents supported boys wearing skirts at Gowerton Comprehensive School in Wales.
The exhibition display pointed out the lack of a "natural link" between an item of clothing and the masculinity or femininity of the wearer, mentioning the kilt as "one of the most potent, versatile, and enduring skirt forms often looked upon by fashion designers as a symbol of a natural, uninhibited, masculinity". It pointed out that fashion designers and male skirt-wearers employ the wearing of skirts for three purposes: to transgress conventional moral and social codes, to redefine the ideal of masculinity, and to inject novelty into male fashion. It linked the wearing of men's skirts to youth movements and countercultural movements such as punk, grunge, and glam rock and to pop-music icons such as Boy George, Miyavi and Adrian Young. Many male musicians have worn skirts and kilts both on and off stage. The wearing of skirts by men is also found in the goth subculture.
Elizabeth Ellsworth, a professor of media studies, eavesdropped on several visitors to the exhibition, noting that because of the exhibition's placement in a self-contained space accessed by a staircase at the far end of the museum's first floor, the visitors were primarily self-selected as those who would be intrigued enough by such an idea in the first place to actually seek it out. According to her report, the reactions were wide-ranging, from the number of women who teased their male companions about whether they would ever consider wearing skirts (to which several men responded that they would) to the man who said, "A caftan after a shower or in the gym? Can you imagine? 'Excuse me! Coming through!'". An adolescent girl rejected in disgust the notion that skirts were similar to the wide pants worn by hip-hop artists. Two elderly women called the idea "utterly ridiculous". One man, reading the exhibition's presentation on the subject of male skirt-wearing in cultures other than those in North America and Europe, observed, "God! Three quarters of the world's population [wear skirts]!"
The exhibition itself attempted to provoke visitors into considering how, historically, male-dress codes have come to this point and whether in fact a trend towards the wearing of skirts by men in the future actually exists. It attempted to raise challenging questions of how a simple item of dress connotes (in Ellsworth's words) "huge ramifications in meanings, behaviours, everyday life, senses of self and others, and configurations of insider and outsider".[
One notable example of men wearing skirts in fiction is in early episodes of the science fiction TV program Star Trek: The NextGeneration. The uniforms worn in the first and second season included a variant consisting of a short sleeved top, with attached skirt. This variant was seen worn by both male and female crew members. The book The Art of Star Trek explained that "the skirt design for men 'skant' was a logical development, given the total equality of the sexes presumed to exist in the 24th century."[