I bought the wool blend one at full price on a Tuesday afternoon, on my actual lunch break, having convinced myself the meeting I had at two required a skirt with “structure,” which is a word I now recognize as the sound of a budget being talked into submission by my own brain. Cost per wear on this thing has been genuinely excellent, three client meetings a month, at minimum, plus every single video call where I’ve learned that a good A line skirt reads as “put together” on camera in a way a dress somehow doesn’t, don’t ask me why, I have theories but none of them are useful. In reality I bought it because the meeting was with someone terrifying and I wanted armor, and a skirt is not armor, but it felt like it that day, which was enough.
The washing situation is where I have to be honest with you. It went into a normal cold cycle, because the care label made vague suggestions rather than actual threats, and it came out fine, structurally, the shape held, the waistband didn’t give up on life. But the color went slightly gray, not enough that anyone else has noticed, enough that I noticed, and now I hand wash it like I’m restoring a painting, which feels like a lot of ceremony for something that cost less than my last dentist appointment.
There is a standing disagreement on this, and it only really comes up when someone asks why I own three of these in nearly the same shade of navy. Half the argument is that an A line skirt is the most forgiving thing in a work wardrobe, sits away from the body, hides a lunch that went badly, survives sitting down for six hours without printing a crease map onto the front of you. The other half, which is also me, on a different day, thinks the silhouette does something slightly matronly if you’re not careful, that it can tip from “structured” into “PTA meeting” with about one inch of extra length, and I have owned both versions, and I know exactly which is which now only because a colleague, not naming names, told me the longer one made me look like I was about to run a bake sale.
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The pleated one is the gamble. It’s beautiful on the right person, moves properly, photographs well on a call, and on me, on a bad day, reads like I’m in a school uniform for adults. I still own it. I still wear it, deliberately, to remind myself that not every purchase needs to win the argument to be worth the closet space.
