A skirt is a tube- or cone-shaped garment which hangs from the waist and covers all or part of the legs. Unlike trousers, a skirt is "unbifurcated" ? that is, not divided into separate legs. A dress (also frock, gown) is a garment consisting of a skirt with an attached bodice or with a matching bodice giving the effect of a one-piece garment.



In Western culture, skirts and dresses are usually considered women's clothing. However, there are exceptions. The kilt is considered a traditional men's garment in Scotland, and is growing in fashion in other parts of the world. Additionally, garments which are identified as skirts are being proposed as men's clothing by some of the trendier fashion houses such as Jean-Paul Gaultier.

At its simplest, a skirt can be a draped garment made out of a single piece of material (such as sarongs or pareos), but most skirts are fitted to the body at the waist and fuller below, with the fullness introduced by means of darts, gores, pleats, or panels. Modern skirts and dresses are usually made of light to mid-weight fabrics, such as denim, jersey, worsted, or poplin. Skirts and dresses of thin or clingy fabrics are worn with slips to make the material of the skirt drape better.

The hemline of skirts and dresses can be as high as the upper thigh or as low as the ground, depending on the whims of fashion and the modesty or personal taste of the wearer.

Some medieval upper-class women wore skirts over 3 metres in diameter at the bottom. At the other extreme, the miniskirts of the 1960s were minimal garments that may barely cover the underwear when seated.

Dresses and skirts in the 19th century

During the nineteenth century, the cut of women's dresses in western culture varied more widely than in any other century. Waistlines started just below the bust (the Empire silhouette) and gradually sank to the natural waist. Skirts started fairly narrow and increased dramatically to the hoopskirt and crinoline-supported styles of the 1860s; then fullness was draped and drawn to the back by means of bustles. Dresses were generally one-piece garments from 1800 through the 1840s; after that it became common for a dress to be made as a separate skirt and bodice, and many dresses had a "day" bodice with a high neckline and long sleeves, and an "evening" bodice with a low neckline (decollete) and very short sleeves.

Throughout this period, the length of fashionable dresses varied only slightly, between ankle-length and floor-sweeping.

Beginning around 1915, hemlines for daytime dresses left the floor for good. For the next fifty years, fashionable skirts became short (1920s), then long (1930s), then shorter (the War Years with their restrictions on fabric), then long (the New Look), then shortest of all during the 1960s, when skirts became as short as possible while avoiding exposure of underwear, which is considered taboo.

Since the 1970s and the rise of pants as an option for all but the most formal of occasions, no one skirt length has dominated fashion for long, with short and ankle-length styles often appearing side-by-side in fashion magazines and catalogs.

Styles of dresses and skirts of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries include:

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Dresses

Basic shapes:

Shirtwaist, a dress with a bodice (waist) like a tailored shirt and an attached straight or full skirt

Sheath, a fitted, often sleeveless dress, sometimes without a waistseam (1960s)

Shift, a straight dress with no waist shaping or seam (1960s)

Sundress, a sleeveless dress of any shape, with a low neckline in a lightweight fabric, for summer wear

Tent, a dress flared from above the bust, sometimes with a yoke (1960s)

Fads and fashions:

Chanel's Little Black Dress (1920s and on)

Tea gown, a frothy, feminine semiformal dress

Dinner dress, a semiformal dress worn when fashionable people "dressed for dinner" (men in tuxedos or dinner jackets, even at home)

Evening gown or formal, a long dress for formal occasions

Ball gown, a long dress with a full, sweeping, or trained skirt for dancing

Kitty Foyle, a dark-colored dress with contrasting (usually white) collar and cuffs (1940s, after a dress worn by Ginger Rogers in the movie of the same name)

Cocktail dress, a semiformal party dress of the current street length (1950s and sporadically popular since)

Granny gown, an ankle-length, often ruffled, day dress of printed calico, cut like a Victorian nightgown, popularized by designer Laura Ashley (late 1960s-1970s).