I settled this one myself, actually, and I’m still a little smug about it. For months I had a running argument with a friend who works in resale with me, she thought chocolate brown maxi skirts were a fall thing only, a September through November situation, and I said that’s insane, brown is a neutral, neutrals don’t have a season. She held her ground until I texted her a picture of myself wearing one in July with a white tank and sandals, looking completely normal, not like I’d wandered out of a pumpkin patch by accident, and that was basically the end of it. She still brings up “the July photo” like it’s case law. It kind of is.
Here’s what I love about the chocolate brown maxi skirt, and I did not expect to love it this much.
It does everything black does except it doesn’t read like you’re in mourning or on your way to a deposition. Black with a bright top can look severe if you’re not careful. Brown just sits there being warm and expensive looking, even the ten dollar thrifted ones, especially the ten dollar thrifted ones honestly, which is its own kind of magic trick. I’ve worn mine with a cobalt blue sweater and gotten a compliment from a stranger at a coffee shop, unprompted, which never happens to me in anything else I own.
What I could live without: the sitting crease.
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Nobody talks about this enough. You sit through one lunch, one car ride, one movie, and you stand up looking like you’ve got a permanent horizontal fold across your lap that says “I have been sitting recently” to everyone in the room. I’ve learned to just own it now, I stopped trying to smooth it out in public because that only draws more attention, you just have to walk it off for ten minutes and let it release on its own, which is a weirdly specific skill I’ve developed for a skirt.
I’ve also talked myself into and out of buying the same exact silhouette maybe four separate times, refreshing a resale listing at 11pm convinced the seller would drop the price if I just waited, then panicking and buying it anyway at full price because someone else had it in their cart, I could see the little notification, and I was NOT about to lose a chocolate brown maxi skirt to a stranger named in the reviews as “quick shipper, would buy again.” I won that one. Barely.
One gamble worth naming honestly, the really slinky bias cut ones look incredible on someone with the patience to dry clean constantly and the confidence to ignore a cling issue in humidity, and slightly like a nightgown on the rest of us. Know which one you are before you buy it. I did not, the first time, and I looked like I’d forgotten to get dressed.
