On a wall outside Sainsbury’s Local, just off the busy Peckham Road in south-east London, fine art students and flatmates Ruby Edwards and Mae Meddings, both 20, are eating lunch. Edwards wears a silk headscarf and a pair of dark glasses. Meddings is draped in dark layers. Both are dressed in the emerging new trend: the skirt-over-trousers look.
“I wear them a lot, usually a miniskirt with baggy trousers,” says Edwards, who is studying at Camberwell College of Arts. “I’ve been doing it for a couple of months. I just think jeans are too boring, but I’m cold, and I have to wear them. LaYering is so much fun.”
Goldsmiths student Meddings prefers long, wavy versions. “I like the silhouette. The baggier the trousers, the more it puffs out. It looks much better than wearing a skirt over tights. I noticed it on a few people a while back and now it’s everywhere. I love it.”
It’s not just students. From the nightclub to the runway, dress and skirt-trouser combinations (aka skousers) are “officially back”, says Vogue. It was a key trend on the autumn/winter 2023 catwalks, from miniskirts worn with sweatpants at Heron Preston to kilts over tailored trousers courtesy of Kim Jones at Fendi, and it is taking off online too.
The skirtoverpants hashtag on TikTok has more than 8.2m views, and secondhand platform Depop says searches for the style are up 40% month-on-month. The latest Hunger Games film, The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, is also channelling the look, where the school uniform leans into genderless fashion, with a pleated red skirt over trousers.
“There’s so much of this at art schools at the moment,” says Jay McCauley Bowstead, lecturer in cultural and historical studies at the London College of Fashion. “At Saint Martins the other week, it felt like every third student I saw was wearing a skirt over trousers, the women and the guys as well.” He says there are various takes on it, including kilts, miniskirts or sometimes a piece of cloth wrapped around.
Not only is it a good option for keeping warm and making the most of your wardrobe, it allows women who do not want to wear a short length to enjoy the garment. “It’s everywhere. I just went into a cafe and saw three girls wearing them,” says Ruby Hallett, 23, who works in a pub in south-east London and is wearing a long green pleated kilt-style skirt bought from a charity shop paired with baggy jeans. “It’s practical and a good way to keep using your skirts throughout the year.”
Others think it is a throwback to the past. The style had a huge moment in the early 2000s thanks to teenybopper stars such as Ashley Tisdale and Miley Cyrus. Fashion and identity commentator Caryn Franklin says that it was mostly seen on pre-teens and younger children, and high-street brands jumped on it quickly.
Zijing Xia, 26, who is visiting the UK from China and is wearing a long white cotton skirt over a pair of pale, baggy jeans, says she likes the nostalgic reference. “I’ve done it to keep me warm, but also because early 00s fashion is back. I just think it works.”
It is a look we are going to see “more and more”, says McCauley Bowstead, as the passage of ideas between art schools and high-end fashion labels is becoming more formal, and designers draw on these chic, edgy spaces. “Luxury houses increasingly come in and do projects with students and offer an internship, some money, or provide fabric in exchange for students generating design ideas for them or acting as a barometer of what’s classed as cool.”
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Pascal Matthias, who teaches fashion at the University of Southampton, thinks this is an example of that process. “It used to be that brands would go to Melrose Avenue in LA, Le Marais in Paris or Soho New York, and do a style analysis where cool, young people hang out, but now trends exist in art schools and ideas are migrating to the catwalk much more quickly,” he says. “Students come up with newness, and it’s where fearless creativity is harnessed.”
So how should you style it? The luxury retailer Net-a-porter has an Alaïa layered skirt and trouser set for £1,060, and a Dion Lee skirt panel straight leg trousers comes in at £1,320. High street stores, such as Zara, have versions starting at £59.99.
Young people, however, think that it works best as a do-it-yourself look. “It’s easy to find a secondhand skirt and make it look cool by cutting and sewing it. I do this a lot before I go out,” says Meddings.
Edwards agrees. “I don’t buy anything new. I search in charity shops and on Vinted. It’s cheap to find something and cut it the way you want. I look for the shape, rather than the pattern, and if I want it shorter, I get my nan to do it. She’s so useful.”
