The skirt has spent decades being reduced to a single idea. Feminine, romantic, sometimes sexy. I think we’ve misunderstood it. Unlike trends that arrive with a timestamp, the skirt has a habit of slipping between decades almost unnoticed. It changes proportion, mood and attitude, but never really loses relevance. There are very few garments that have survived fashion’s constant appetite for reinvention quite like it has.
After years of wartime austerity, fashion answered with generous, sweeping skirts that celebrated abundance again. A decade later, hemlines rose, becoming shorthand for youth and independence. In the ’90s, the silhouette became quieter, stripped back into bias-cut slips that felt intuitive rather than extravagant. Every era has rewritten the skirt according to its own ideals, and somehow it has accommodated every version of femininity without ever belonging to just one. That, to me, is its greatest strength. The same silhouette can feel sharp with a tailored jacket, undone with an oversized knit, nonchalant with nothing more than a white tank, or entirely transformed with a kitten heel. It allows a woman to decide how she wants to be seen that day.
For ‘The Seven’, we’ve considerably played with volume this time, exploring ruffles and cascading silhouettes and the different ways fabric can occupy space around the body. The Raven skirt, in particular, has a fullness that makes me think of Dior’s New Look.
As a designer, I’ve always found possibility far more interesting than perfection. Designing a skirt has never felt finite to me. Every season, it offers another question. A different proportion, a different sense of balance. The smallest adjustment can change its entire presence, which is perhaps why I’ve never felt I’ve arrived at a definitive version of it.
Over the years, I realised I was returning to the skirt almost instinctively. It appeared across collections in different forms, carrying a different mood each time. Looking back, ‘The Seven’ feels less like a new idea than the continuation of a conversation I’d already been having for years. Each skirt has its own character. Some are grounded, others more commanding. Some hold their shape with clarity, while others feel softer and more fluid. Colour plays its part too, but so does fabric, proportion and the way each piece occupies space.
One of my favourite pieces to create was the Oak skirt. We returned to the signature 431-88 drape, this time in a skirt, and introduced black through a fully textured, sequinned belt. Black and white are colours I return to often, and I loved the idea of disrupting the purity of the white with something tactile and unexpected. It was a small intervention, but one that completely changed the character of the piece.
The Dan skirt came from a very different place. It is shorter, sharper and perhaps one of the sexier pieces in the collection, with a detachable leather flap at the waist and zipper detailing. I love how direct it feels. It is the kind of skirt that can shift depending on how you wear it, but personally, I immediately imagine it for a night out.
I’ve never been interested in asking women to dress one way. Personal style has always been more nuanced than that. Perhaps that’s why I keep coming back to the skirt. It has an extraordinary capacity for reinvention while remaining entirely familiar. Every time I return to it, it reveals another possibility, another perspective, another way of seeing the same garment.
