Believe it or not, the story of the 'invention' of the pencil skirt is actually quite a good one. In 1908 the brothers Wright chose the wife of a business associate as the first female passenger on one of their planes, and because the possible flapping of her long skirts near the propellors and engines of the plane posed a dangerous threat they decided to tie her skirts around her legs. The pictures of this legendary flight went all over the world and almost everyone saw them. Parisian fashiondesigners were strangely inspired by this 'tied skirt' and they created a skirt shape that would soon become known as the Hobble skirt. It was a fenomenale hit and for a while the extremely tight and unpractical silhouette dominated the western fashions. Because the women who wore these skirts often had to tie their knees together they had great difficulty walking, and therefore the new fashion was jokingly called the 'speed limit skirt'. We know it now as the official predecessor of our beloved pencil skirt.
It stayed in fashion all through the 60's, altough the lenght of the skirt became considerably shorter and became known as 'The mini'. The pencil shape is, like many other styles that were born in the 50's, a timeless piece of feminine fashion beacuse it is a classic silhouette that flatters women in many different shapes and sizes.
It did not surprise us that this year (2012), when we watched the spring and summer collections of the big designers glide over the catwalks, we saw the return of an old friend. Take a guess..... Yes indeed
The Pencil Skirt!
Of course we have a wide range of pencil skirts in our collection, here are some examples:
These, and many more, are available at our store Bennies Fifties in Scheveningen (Holland) or online at www.fiftiesstore.com. Come and have a look, we are available at any time with the largest collection of retro clothing for women and men.
