Review

Imagine you're a normal sort of bloke.

First, you're invited to a mate's wedding, which is full Highland dress in Scotland. Do you wear a kilt? Of course; it's laugh, you welcome the opportunity to make jokes about nothing being worn, it's all in perfect working order, and you rather like your girlfriend having the tipsily wandering hands for a change.

Second, you're on holiday in a beachy South-East Asian resort somewhere. Do you wander round in a Becks-style sarong on your way to the palm-lined restaurant? No problem. You're simply being laid-back and relaxed and doing what the locals do, such as watching Man U on the satellite.

But would you wear a skirt on the underground on your way to work? Of course not; you'd be scorned, ridiculed, derided, laughed at, almost as much as if you admitted to owning a Skoda, enjoying Blue Nun or listening to Celine Dion.

Funny things happen in London, and you do, very occasionally, see a man in the street so attired (one female member of this office recently dated a computer programmer who regularly wears a skirt in public, but won't be drawn on the 'is anything worn' question). However, it clearly isn't the norm.

The V&A's 'Men in Skirts' exhibition is an attempt to challenge these preconceptions, an addition to its regular displays of costume through the ages. You can see dozens of attempts by modern fashion designers - including Jean-Paul Gaultier, famous for his, er, open-minded designs - to prove that a bloke in a skirt can look good.

And all very curious it is. Most of the things are unlikely to become standard wear: Ozwald Boateng's smart lime-green business suit, complete with snappy shirt and tie and finished off with a well-cut calf-length skirt, is certainly eye-catching, but it's just too hard to imagine it as not being, well, wussy. And Gaultier's male ball-gown - a flowing creation in black taffeta that lacks a back half and so displays the buttocks to the rest of the party - could only really be carried off by the most outrÈ.

Some attempts come close to working - a leather working kilt, complete with penknives and key-fobs hanging purposefully off, looks the sort of thing that might just be OK. One attendee at the press launch was so clothed, and - especially with his rascally stubble and tousled dreadlocks - was not the sort of character you'd mess with.

There are displays of male-skirt fashions of the recent past, mostly covering Vivienne Westwood's angry punk and Kurt Cobain's frankly silly grunge, and a running slide show pot-pourri of everything from catwalk absurdities to the Royal Family, snapped in kilts circa 1975, looking even more absurd.

One dilemma never quite gets resolved - are skirts to show a man's feminine side, or can they genuinely be masculine? - and while the information boards remind us that some cultures do accept, or have accepted, skirts (such as the dhoti, everyday streetwear in India) there's not all that much evidence to encourage the more pioneering among us.

The day when a man can wear a skirt to a shareholder meeting, and not just on some attention-grabbing fashion pantomime, is still far off, if it ever does arrive. For the moment, the trousers wear the trousers. But the V&A's exhibition is great fun. Go and smile, go and be embarrassed if you're a bloke, go and giggle if you're a city chick, go and plan your Highland-dress wedding. But I'll stick with the pants for the time being, thanks...