When did the skirt suit fall out of favor?
Was it when women decided that they should stop trying to dress like their male peers, because power did not preclude femininity, and floral dresses invaded the C-suite (see: Michelle Obama)? Was it when Angela Merkel settled on a brightly colored jacket and black trousers as her uniform of choice, and every other female politician seemed to follow up with her version of the same? Was it when the skirt suit became the outfit of choice for the lunching lady of leisure, and not the working woman?
It’s unclear, but these days Carly Fiorina is not the only person who wants to bring it back. Well, this is fashion. Everything that was out comes in again — especially when what is in suddenly smacks of the old guard.
“Ms. Prada wanted to go back and think about suits, because we really don’t do them so much anymore,” Fabio Zambernardi said backstage after the Prada show. As Miuccia Prada’s design director, he was acting as spokesman for the designer, absent after the death of an aunt. The Prada backstage aphorisms are generally treated as manna from heaven by the ravening style hordes, and Mr. Zambernardi was doing his game best to channel her spirit: “She became obsessed.” Sometimes it’s that simple.
Though there was nothing particularly simple about the results, which involved the de- and reconstruction of this particular signifier of bourgeois female dress, with each piece questioning the assumption that the matching boxed-off jacket and knee-length skirt was quite as hackneyed as its current image seemed to suggest.
