Men's skirts

Outside of Western cultures, men's clothing commonly includes skirts and skirt-like garments; however, in North America and much of Europe, the wearing of a skirt is today usually seen as typical for women and girls and not men and boys, the most notable exceptions being the cassock and the kilt. People have variously attempted to promote the wearing of skirts by men in Western culture and to do away with this gender distinction, albeit with limited general success and considerable cultural resistance.

Ancient Hebrew, Greek, and Roman men generally wore some form of tunic. Ancient Egyptian Pharaohs wore a wrap skirt known as a shendyt, which was similar to modern kilts, while the high priests wore a wrap skirt similar to a sarong.

Both the Anglo-Saxons and Normans wore skirted garments, as can be seen in the Bayeux Tapestry. These fashions continued well into the Middle Ages.

From the early Victorian period, there was a decline in the wearing of bright colours and luxurious fabrics by men, with a definite preference for sobriety of dress. By the mid-20th century, orthodox Western male dress, especially business and semi-formal dress, was dominated by sober suits, plain shirts and ties.

In the 1960s, there was widespread reaction against the accepted North American and European conventions of male and female dress. This unisex fashion movement aimed to eliminate the sartorial differences between men and women. In practice, it usually meant that women would wear male dress, i.e., shirts and trousers. Men rarely went as far in the adoption of traditionally female dress modes. The furthest that most men went in the 1960s in this regard were velvet trousers, flowered or frilled shirts and ties, and long hair.

In the 1970s, David Hall, a former research engineer at the Stanford Research Institute (SRI), actively promoted the use of skirts for men, appearing on both The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson and the Phil Donahue Show. In addition, he was featured in many articles at the time. In his essay "Skirts for Men: the advantages and disadvantages of various forms of bodily covering", he opined that men should wear skirts for both symbolic and practical reasons. Symbolically, wearing skirts would allow men to take on desirable female characteristics. In practical terms, skirts, he suggested, do not chafe around the groin, and they are more suited to warm climates.

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