The Pencil Skirt

May 2013

Ah, the pencil skirt. 

A staple of vintage fashion. 

The best friend of the hourglass figure. 

The giver of curves. 

Today I'm wearing this marvellous tweed pencil skirt, reminiscent of the forties.  The sturdy tweed makes it fantastic for wearing day to day, and the figure hugging shape recreates that famous forties silhouette. 

  The pencil skirt was made famous in the forties by the ever wonderful Monsieur Dior, and those women had a lot to thank him for. The cut created by the pencil suit, as seen above, was a crafty one. It hearkened back to pre-war Edwardian fashion by appearing sensible, prim and proper; but the suit caresses every curve of the female form, so there was no need to lose the glamour of the twenties and thirties. 

   The tweed skirt, however, teaches a valuable lesson about dressing during war time. With the clothing rations and the short supply of material, women could hardly afford to defy the war effort and dress in silks and satin. The change of dress from the thirties is remarkable- gone was frivolous dressing and there to stay for the length of the war was lowering hemlines to last longer, and dressing for practical means rather than for pleasure. The tweed suit, immortalised by screen sirens and Dior models, captures the way in which women managed to channel their pride in dress and incredible style into the fashion of the time. Thankfully, this modern cut requires no corset, as those previous ones did. Teamed with a crisp white shirt, a string of pearls, and that all important slick of crimson lipstick, the tweed pencil skirt channels both the glamour and the practicality of the wartime era. 

The tweed skirt, which comes with a matching jacket, is a northern charity shop find.