Trend Deep-Dive: The Pencil Skirt
Sex symbol, librarian staple, grandma-chic. Those are all associations that have been made with the famous pencil skirt. To celebrate its glorious return to our wardrobes, let’s deep-dive into the history behind this surprisingly controversial skirt silhouette.
If the pencil skirt were to have a birth year, it would have to be 1954. That’s when French couturier Christian Dior introduced his ‘H-Line Collection’, offering a substitute for his earlier so-called ‘New Look’ - a take on the classic, feminine style that predated the two World Wars.
Dior paired the revolutionary skirt silhouette with blazers cinched at the waist, creating an hourglass shape. The skirt itself, which he considered a textural interpretation of the letter 'H', was designed to emphasise women’s hips and elongate their legs.
While the French designer was certainly one of the pioneers of the pencil skirt, other couturiers, such as Cristóbal Balenciaga, had also experimented with narrower, body-skimming silhouettes that contrasted with the voluminous shapes of Dior’s ‘New Look’.
And even earlier, in 1908, the so-called ‘hobble skirt’ made headlines after the first female airplane passenger, Edith Ogilby Berg, tied her floor-length skirt at the ankles with a rope to prevent it from getting caught while boarding a flight. Fashion designers soon imitated the restricted silhouette, creating the hobble skirt trend that briefly swept the early 1910s.
Until its 1950s Dior revival, the slim skirt silhouette had largely been forgotten. After the debut of the ‘H-Line Collection’, the pencil skirt quickly became a wardrobe staple for style icons such as Marilyn Monroe, Grace Kelly, and Audrey Hepburn - and a symbol of femininity, luxury, and, yes, even sex appeal.
Worn with body-hugging cardigans and cropped jackets, the pencil skirt was the perfect garment to highlight women’s natural curves in the most elegant way.
Thanks to its versatility and the wide range of materials used - from latex and leather to wool and cotton blends - the pencil skirt became a staple for women in the workforce, on the streets, in the bedroom, and on the silver screen alike.
Like any silhouette, it has fallen in and out of fashion over the decades, but one thing is certain: the pencil skirt has earned its place among wardrobe classics and will continue to inspire, challenge, and be reinvented by designers across the globe.
