While women can wear trousers without raising questions about their femininity, men cannot wear skirts without their masculinity being brought into account. Gaultier attempts to address this discrimination with his skirts for men. He presents men with a means of escaping the confines of traditional male apparel and, at the same time, a means of escaping the confines of traditional male roles and stereotypes. Like the other designers represented in Men in Skirts, Gaultier is an inveterate optimist, holding out the hope that society will transform the meanings of masculinity and femininity to construct a more equitable cultural and sartorial system.

Throughout the history of Western dress, the overwhelming direction in the borrowing of gender symbols is from men's to women's dress. In the seventeenth century, for instance, women adopted the male suit for their riding habits, including masculine style wigs and hats, everything but the breeches. More recently, in the early twentieth century, women adopted trousers, an idea that was first promulgated by Amelia Bloomer in the 1850s. However, examples of men borrowing clothes drawn from the feminine tradition are rare. Nowadays, society allows women to enjoy full advantages of a male and female wardrobe but disallows men the full advantages of a female wardrobe.

Gaultier's original skirt for men was not in fact a skirt, but a pair of trousers with one leg wrapped over the other. It was a design inspired by a pair of bermuda shorts by the French couturier Jacques Esterel, for whom Gaultier had worked as a stylist in the early 1970s. The transgression was no more than apparent, but the illusion fulfilled Gaultier's intention of focusing and stimulating debate about "men in skirts" as well as gender symbols and conventions. In creating skirts for men, one of Gaultier's aims is to highlight the sartorial inequality that exists between the sexes.

Frock Coat Ensemble
Denim, printed tulle T-shirt and footless tights
with brass studs
Spring/ Summer 1994

"Saying that this fabric or that colour is for a boy and another colour or fabric is for a girl is as ridiculous as saying this vegetable can only be eaten by a boy or this drink is only suitable for a girl. It is so silly; but we do it all the time."

Since his first menswear collection in 1984, Jean-Paul Gaultier has constantly questioned traditional ideas about men's appearance and behaviour. Gaultier believes that there is no clothing, with the exception of the bra, that is intrinsically male or female. He made his most definitive statement on the subject when he launched the "skirt for men" in his Spring/Summer collection 1985 collection "Et Dieu Créa L'Homme" ("And God Created Man"), a pastiche of Roger Vadim's classic 1957 film "Et Dieu Créa La Femme" which starred Brigitte Bardot.