Dedicated follower of fashion

by Smyth Harper

BBC News Online, Manchester

The Scots have got away with it for centuries. So BBC News Online posed the question: why can't English men wear skirts?

BBC employees dressed in skirts
Smyth and Dave prepare for action
Having put up with David Beckham for so long, the residents of Manchester are used to being in the vanguard of contemporary fashion, so where better to see if the UK is ready for men in skirts?

Particularly since a web-based firm has been set up here selling skirts and dresses for the fashion conscious man.

One quick phone call to Midas Clothing, and founder Lance Berry made sure I received one of their finest examples to give it a go.

After receiving the skirt, I decided it was important to start wearing it in a context which I could be comfortable with, before my legs were unleashed on unsuspecting Manchester.

Cat catastrophe

So, in the privacy of my own home, I did the vacuuming attired in the nifty, pleated combat number.

It was a refreshing, perhaps even liberating experience.

For me at least.

The kitten may not agree as he was last seen checking himself back in with the Cats' Protection League.

And I don't think the postman will be ringing twice again any time soon.

But you can't keep a good man down, and I was ready to be a latter-day Katharine Hepburn and show the world that there really are no boundaries to fashion.

Man in skirt
Men wearing skirts does raise the odd eyebrow
In the newsroom there were hoots of delight at the sight as I arrived to champion the A-line.

Undaunted - and with the help of Dave, a colleague from BBC GMR's Allan Beswick programme - it was time to see what the people of this fine city really thought.

"They're wearing skirts," yelled an excited child from the window of a car, moments after we stepped out on to Oxford Road.

But, unless it was pointed out to them, most people were disappointedly disinterested in our unusual choice of menswear.

Although one couple, who had just moved to Manchester from Ireland, seemed to make a frantic call to Ryanair after we spoke to them.

Confident and comfortable

Others were very flattering.

"It doesn't matter really," said Angela, 22. "I didn't even notice you were wearing a skirt, but that's because you are just being yourself.

"You're confident and clearly comfortable, so surely that's the main thing.

"I think it's great."

But an 87-year-old woman - who asked not be named - sunning herself at Piccadilly Gardens was having none of it.

"It's a disgrace," she said, sternly.

"Men should be men. Have you any idea how ridiculous you look?"

Ouch.

On a Friday night on Canal Street you will see many stranger sights than a man in a skirt, and, not surprisingly, the reaction there could most accurately be described as a shrug of the shoulders.

Man in skirt talking at a bar
Manchester's Canal Street is no stranger to unusual fashions
One of the men drinking outside in the sunshine said it would be inevitable that people would assume any man wearing a skirt would be gay.

"That's unfair and wrong, of course," Ross said. "But still inevitable.

"At the same time gay men do have a lot of guts. I don't think we'd all wear a skirt, but some might do it to make a point.

"And who knows, like so many other things the gay community has started, it may not be too long before it took off."

So what of men in skirts?

To go back to Katharine, she caused outrage 70 years ago when she started wearing men's clothes.

How fitting would it be if, in the year she died, the tables were finally turned.

Friday, 11 July, 2003