It looks like a skirt but is not. It flares like a skirt, feels like a skirt, and is almost a skirt but more practical.
Divided skirt - with a history of freedom statement
We, women in Western culture can go out wearing whatever we fancy now—a dress, skirt, trousers, or jeans—in all shapes, fits, and lengths. In the early XX century, it was quite the opposite; women had to dress strictly according to gender roles. With the growing popularity of women riding bicycles and other female sports becoming a thing, wearing a split skirt, allowing more physical agility, was also growing, provoking scorching criticism. There were laws forbidding female trousers from being worn in public unless it was exclusively for bike riding. Wearing bloomers, divided skirts, or trousers has a strong association with resistance - fights for women’s rights and the suffrage movement.
Later, during the Second World War and after, when more women entered the workforce, women's trousers (often it was their husband’s civilian clothing, as men were away in the armed forces) were worn as work clothing. Women with trousers slightly, but became a more common occurrence. When out of work, practical two-piece mix-and-match outfits were popular. Looking so similar to a skirt, culottes, as one element of these outfits, allowed women their freedom of movement while pushing away strict requirements of wearing a skirt in public.
Feminine image
The Victorian-era concept of femininity, when domesticity and motherhood were considered to be sufficient fulfillment for women, feels unacceptable in the XXI century. Today, we have legal rights to thrive in public life entirely, but here comes a struggle when you try to juggle between being a good mother and fulfilling your career expectations while dealing with misogyny and high expectations from society. Motherhood is still a weighty part of some modern women’s lives. Giving birth and raising humans is a challenging, demanding, fulfilling, and powerful lifelong journey. It changes permanently everyday routines from sequential to constant multitasking.
The traditional image of the feminine is more of that from the Victorian era—a fragile creature in a corset with a long crinoline skirt—a person stuck in her clothes, with limited options to move (and live) freely. But this vision of a woman figure with a long skirt as the center heart of a home, holding it all together, has power in it. This archaic, powerful goddess from the times of matriarchy, birthing and growing humanity, has power in it.
Now, a skirt is just one of many other clothes women (and men) wear, but I like the idea that clothing forms have stories with them, are archetypical. Choosing to wear a flaring skirt when juggling all the modern woman’s responsibilities could be kind of a therapeutic way to accept and cherish that ancient caring female in modernity.
Are culottes pants?
The VIKSVOS culotte is more skirt, than trousers. Fitted on the waist, our culottes have a split skirt cut. It has all that wearing of a flaring skirt feeling but with the added functionality of pants.
It’s a skirt for comfortable city biking and living an active everyday life, a basic element of your everyday mix-and-match garderobe.
In contrast to the oppressive early XX century image, VIKSVOS clothes have functional details - spacious pockets, roll-up button tabs, elastic in the waist, breathable materials - all helping to navigate different everyday situations.
댓글