Men's Skirts

Outside Western cultures, men's clothing commonly includes skirts and skirt-like garments; however, in North America and much of Europe, skirts are usually seen as feminine clothing, and are not always considered acceptable for men and boys to wear. While there are exceptions, most notably the cassock and the kilt, these are not really considered 'skirts' in the typical sense of fashion wear; rather they are worn as cultural and vocational garments. People have variously attempted to promote the fashionable wearing of skirts by men in Western culture and to do away with this gender distinction.

In Western cultures

Ancient times

Skirts have been worn since prehistoric times. They were the standard dressing for men and women in all ancient cultures in the Near East and Egypt.

The Kingdom of Sumer in Mesopotamia recorded two categories of clothing. The ritual attire for men was a fur skirt tied to a belt called Kaunakes. The term kaunakes, which originally referred to a sheep's fleece, was later applied to the garment itself. The animal pelts originally used were replaced by kaunakes cloth, a textile that imitated fleecy sheep skin. Kaunakes cloth also served as a symbol in religious iconography, as the fleecy cloak of St. John the Baptist.

Depictions of kings and their attendants from the Old Assyrian Empire and Babylonia on monuments like the Black Obelisk of Salmanazar show men wearing fringed cloths wrapped around their sleeved tunics.

Ancient Egyptian garments were mainly made of white linen. The exclusive use of draped linen garments, and the wearing of similar styles by men and women, remained almost unaltered as the main features of Ancient Egyptian costume. From about 2130 BC during the Old Kingdom of Egypt, men also wore wrap around 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 there was a fashion for longer kilts, almost like skirts, reaching from the waist to ankles, sometimes hanging from the armpits. During the New Kingdom of Egypt, kilts with a pleated triangular section became fashionable for men. Beneath was worn a triangular loincloth, or shente, whose ends were fastened with cord ties.

In Ancient Greece the simple, sleeved T-shaped tunics were constructed of three seamed tubes of cloth, a style that originated in the Semitic Near East, along with the Semitic-based word khiton, also referred to as a chiton. The belted worn linen chiton was the primary garment for men and women.

File:Egyptian kilt.jpg, Statue of Ramaat, an official from Gizeh wearing a pleated Egyptian kilt, ca. 2.250 BC
File:A Griechen Wagenlenker 02.jpg, A Greek charioteer from Delphi wearing a long chiton, ca. 470 BC
Image:Luttrell servant.jpg, An illustration from between 1325 and 1335 showing an English man in a skirted garment
File:Gotik MaennerrockFarbe.jpg, Men's dress made of red silk (1480–90) to be buttoned on the front, History Museum of Bern (Switzerland)
File:Ulrich3mecklenburg.jpg, Duke Ulrich of Mecklenburg wearing a doublet and diverted skirt with codpiece and black tights, (1573)
File:After Hans Holbein the Younger - Portrait of Henry VIII - Google Art Project.jpg, Henry VIII wearing a doublet and diverted skirt with codpiece

The Romans adopted many facets of Greek culture, including the same manner of dressing. The Celts and Germanic peoples wore a skirted garment which the historian Diodorus Siculus (fl. 1st century BC) called chiton. Below they wore knee-length trousers. The Anglo-Saxons, Normans, Franks and other people of Western and Northern Europe continued this fashion well into the Middle Ages, as can be seen in the Bayeux Tapestry.

Technological advances in weaving with foot-treadle floor looms and the use of scissors with pivoted blades and handles in the 13–15th century led to new designs. The upper part of dresses could now be tailored exactly to the body. Men's dresses were buttoned on the front and women's dresses got a décolletage. The lower part of men's dresses were much shorter in length than those for women. They were wide cut and often pleated with an A-line so that horse riding became more comfortable. Even a knights armor had a short metal skirt below the breastplate. It covered the straps attaching the upper legs iron cuisse to the breastplate. Other similar garments worn by men around the world include the Greek and Balkan fustanella (a short flared cotton skirt)

Decline

The innovative new techniques specially improved tailoring trousers and tights which designs needed more differently cut pieces of cloth than most skirts. "Real" trousers and tights increasingly replaced the prevalent use of the hose (clothing) which like stockings covered only the legs and had to be attached with garters to underpants or a doublet