The newest addition to the list of things-I-will-sort-out-when-I-have-an-income is a long black kilted skirt.
Every year as the weather turns autumnal I think about the long black skirts I’d love to have. I have a couple of lovely tartan wool skirts that no longer fit, and have had black pleated skirts that served well in their time. A long black circle skirt with deep pokcets is often on my mind. But Scottish winters are really fucking cold, and in January you really want the layers of pleating to keep you alive. So that’s what my mind is settling on- a calf-length skirt, plain black (or with a subtle pattern like herringbone), made kilt-style but not technically a kilt for reasons of length and gender binary.
The ideal fabric to make it from would be pure wool. If I’m going to the whole hog of buying the fabric and making the skirt kilt-style, I may as well do it properly, and wool is one of the most proper fabrics there is- natural fibre, locally produced, fantastic insulator, waterproof and fireproof, available in a large range of beautifully woven patterns. One of the benefits to a kilt-type construction is that it preserves the fabric, being a folded and stitched rectangle. If I know where the stitches are I can alter it later depending on what my waistline does. That makes it practically an investment!
Ah, but the money. Pure wool suiting fabric begins at around £25/metre. It would be absolute foolishness to jump in without testing the construction with a cheaper material – perhaps a £10-12/m wool blend, if I can find one wide enough to split in half and still get the length I want. There are various polyviscoses, which happens to be the go-to blend for cheap tartanlike material, and suffers day-to-day wear fairly well for the low price. Well, I suppose there’s no reason I can’t make a pretty mockup…
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