I have two green satin skirts in my closet right now that basically prove I don’t have one opinion about this category, I have two opinions that hate each other. One is a bottle green midi, bias cut, thirteen dollars from the Tuesday restock at my usual place, and it moves like it’s auditioning for something. The other is a brighter, more emerald mini I paid thirty two dollars for at an actual retail store during a moment of weakness, and it sits there stiff as a place mat no matter what I do to it.
The bottle green one is the piece getting all the wear. I’ve had it eleven weeks and I’ve worn it nine times, which by my math is about a dollar forty a wear and dropping every week I keep reaching for it, so I’ve basically stopped doing the math because it just makes me smug. The emerald mini has been worn three times in four months and one of those times was to prove a point to myself that it could work, and it couldn’t, it just sat there looking like it was waiting for a hem that never came.
What actually works with the bottle green: a plain black ribbed tank, sleeves pushed up on an oversized white shirt tied at the waist, and once, memorably, a gray cardigan that made my coworker at the design studio ask if I was “doing quiet luxury now,” which I am not, I was doing laundry day. Sheer black tights under it in the fall look properly good, there’s something about matte black tights against that shine that stops it looking like I’m about to hand someone a cocktail. Bare legs in summer, also fine, no notes.
What does not work, and I tried it, is anything else with shine near it.
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Satin top over satin skirt is not an outfit, it’s a fire hazard for how much it reflects overhead lighting, I looked like a foil balloon at my own dinner and I’m not doing that again. Chunky knits over the mini version also failed, all volume up top and a stiff little skirt underneath just reads like the skirt lost an argument.
Here’s the gamble part, because I’d be lying if I said either of these is universal. The bright emerald is genuinely a hard color, it wants a specific undertone and a specific occasion, and on the wrong person, or honestly on the right person on the wrong day, it just looks costume-y. I know this because I am sometimes the wrong person on the wrong day.
So the tally for the year says one clear win and one skirt I’m keeping out of stubbornness more than logic. I’ve decided that’s fine. Not every green satin skirt has to earn its keep the same way, some of them just have to sit in the closet reminding me I have taste, occasionally, in theory.
