I sell swimwear, not skirts, so this isn’t exactly my usual battlefield, but godet skirts show up on my floor constantly in the fall when everyone’s buying one nice thing for a trip that isn’t a beach, and I’ve bought two that could not be more different if they tried. One cost me sixty five dollars at a store that smells like candles I can’t afford. The other cost fourteen dollars and I bought it because it was the last one on the rack and I was late for something. Both still hang in my closet. That’s the whole argument right there.
The expensive one moves like it knows something the cheap one doesn’t.
You walk and the panels swing open at the hem in this way that looks completely accidental but obviously isn’t, somebody engineered that swish, and I paid for the engineering whether I meant to or not. The cheap one swings too, just a beat later, like it’s thinking about it first. Standing still, nobody on earth could tell you which one cost four times as much. Walking, I could tell you in about six seconds, and so could anyone watching, which is either the whole point of spending the money or proof that nobody’s actually watching that closely.
Here’s my real complaint, and it applies to both: pockets.
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Neither one has them. One customer last week asked me, completely sincerely, where she was supposed to put her phone, and I had to explain that a godet skirt is not asking that question, it is actively avoiding it, the panels are busy doing a swishing thing and cannot also be holding your keys. So you’re back to a bag for everything, which is fine until you’re at a dinner and your phone’s buzzing in a bag across the room and you’re pretending you didn’t feel it through the table.
The cheap one is the gamble I’ll admit to. It’s polyester, it runs a little static in air conditioning, and by day three of wearing it on a trip it clings in a way the studio photo never showed you. It’s not for everybody, it’s for someone who wants the shape without the commitment, and I happen to be that someone most weeks. The expensive one is the safer buy if you’re only getting one, it holds its shape after a wash, doesn’t cling, doesn’t argue with you.
Four days before any trip where I’d actually pack one, I’m still standing in front of both wondering which one earns the suitcase space, and most of the time I take the cheap one anyway, because if it gets ruined by a spilled margarita I will not lie awake about it, and that peace of mind is worth more than the swish.
