A skirt is the lower part of a dress or a separate outer garment that covers a person from the waist downwards.
At its simplest, a skirt can be a draped garment made out of a single piece of fabric (such as pareos). However, most skirts are fitted to the body at the waist or hips and fuller below, with the fullness introduced by means of darts, gores, pleats, or panels. Modern skirts are usually made of light to mid-weight fabrics, such as denim, jersey, worsted, or poplin. Skirts of thin or clingy fabrics are often worn with slips to make the material of the skirt drape better and for modesty.
In modern times, skirts are very commonly worn by women and girls. Some exceptions include the izaar, worn by many Muslim cultures, and the kilt, a traditional men's garment in Scotland, Ireland, and sometimes England. Fashion designers such as Jean Paul Gaultier, Vivienne Westwood, Kenzo and Marc Jacobs have also shown men's skirts. Transgressing social codes, Gaultier frequently introduces the skirt into his men's wear collections as a means of injecting novelty into male attire, most famously the sarong seen on David Beckham.
The hemline of skirts can vary from micro to floor-length and can vary according to cultural conceptions of modesty and aesthetics as well as the wearer's personal taste, which can be influenced by such factors as fashion and social context. Most skirts are complete garments, but some skirt-looking panels may be part of another garment such as leggings, shorts, and swimsuits.
History
Skirts have been worn since prehistoric times as the simplest way to cover the lower body. Figurines produced by the Vinča culture (–4500 BC) located on the territory of present-day Serbia and neighboring Balkans from the start of the copper age show women in skirt-like garments.
A straw-woven skirt dating to 3900 BC was discovered in Armenia at the Areni-1 cave. Skirts were the standard attire for men and women in all ancient cultures in the Near East and Egypt. The Sumerians in Mesopotamia wore kaunakes (, ultimately from ), a type of fur skirt tied to a belt. The term originally referred to a sheep's fleece, but eventually came to be applied to the garment itself. Eventually, the animal pelts were replaced by "kaunakes cloth", a textile that imitated fleecy sheepskin. Kaunakes cloth also served as a symbol in religious iconography, such as in the fleecy cloak of John the Baptist.
Ancient Egyptian garments were mainly made of linen. For the upper classes, they were beautifully woven and intricately pleated. Around 2130 BC, during the Old Kingdom of Egypt, men wore wraparound skirts (kilts) known as the shendyt. They were made of a rectangular piece of cloth wrapped around the lower body and tied in front. By the Middle Kingdom of Egypt, longer skirts, reaching from the waist to ankles and sometimes hanging from the armpits, became fashionable. During the New Kingdom of Egypt, kilts with a pleated triangular section became fashionable for men. Beneath these, a shente, or triangular loincloth whose ends were fastened with cord ties, were worn.
During the Bronze Age, in the Southern parts of Western and Central Europe, wraparound dress-like garments were preferred. However, in Northern Europe, people also wore skirts and blouses.
In the Middle Ages, men and women preferred dress-like garments. The lower part of men's dresses were much shorter in length compared to those for women. They were wide cut and often pleated or gored so that horse riding was more comfortable. Even a knight's armor had a short metal skirt below the breastplate. It covered the straps attaching the upper legs iron cuisse to the breastplate. Technological advances in weaving in the 13th–15th century, like foot-treadle floor looms and scissors with pivoted blades and handles, improved tailoring trousers and tights. They became fashionable for men and henceforth became standard male attire whilst becoming taboo for women.
Skirts are still worn by men and women from many cultures, such as the lungi, lehenga, kanga and sarong worn in South Asia and Southeast Asia, and the kilt worn in Scotland and Ireland.
One of the earliest known cultures to have females wear clothing resembling miniskirts were the Duan Qun Miao (), which literally means "Short Skirt Miao". This was in reference to the short miniskirts "that barely cover the buttocks" worn by women of the tribe, and which were probably shocking to observers in premodern and early modern times.