DEAR MISS MANNERS: When is it proper to wear ankle-length skirts?
This is my preferred skirt length, and I wear them a lot. I have tweed narrow ones for work, floral print ones for dressy occasions, and some that I wear to lounge around the house. I even found a suit with a tailored, narrow ankle-length skirt that I wear for formal business occasions.
I think I read that long skirt lengths were only for evening. I love wearing skirts, but have never been too keen on showing much leg. Am I being improper?
GENTLE READER: Only if you are actually allowing your ankles to show.
Oh, sorry. Miss Manners misses those days, when it was so easy to shock people. Now it is probably impossible to do so.
However, she does not miss the later -- although still distant -- days when fashion regularly decreed changing skirt lengths, and condemned as dowdy anyone who did not scramble to keep up, or down, as the case may have been.
So you may indeed wear the long skirts you prefer. Miss Manners is not so radical as to condone evening clothes being worn during the daytime, but it is not mere length that defines them. It is only if you went about in daylight wearing, for example, a low-cut satin dress with a bell skirt that she would assume you to be a bit late in getting home.