My roommate Mara and I were splitting a cab last month, both of us in coats, both of us convinced the other one was wrong about biker shorts under a dress, and we never actually settled it, because it dropped to nineteen degrees that weekend and the whole argument just stopped mattering. That’s usually how it goes with this thing. Nobody wins, the weather wins.
Here’s my side. I wear them under basically everything from October through February because the alternative is bare legs and a coat, which is its own kind of insane commitment. The problem is never the shorts themselves, it’s what happens after forty minutes on a heated train car when you’re layered up like you’re headed to base camp and the shorts decide that’s the moment to ride up two inches on the inseam.
I have adjusted my own outfit standing up on the Nashville trolley more times than I want to admit, one hand on the pole, one hand doing damage control under a coat, looking completely deranged to everyone around me.
Mara’s take is that the good ones don’t ride up, they just sit wrong the second you sit down, which is a different problem and honestly a worse one because you don’t find out until you’re already committed, already at the restaurant, already three bites into an appetizer when you realize the hem has crept up to a spot that makes cocktail hour feel like a hostage situation.
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She does the sit down test in the dressing room every single time now, actually sits, actually crosses her legs, because she got burned once at a wedding and will not discuss the specifics.
Length is where we actually agree, for once. Anything that ends right at mid thigh is a gamble depending on what’s going over it, a slightly shorter dress and you’re exposed in a way that reads more accident than choice. I go one size up from what feels right in the dressing room mirror, because the mirror lies and the actual sitting, walking, stair climbing version of you does not.
The pick I’m not going to pretend is universal is the higher compression one, the kind that basically holds your whole midsection like a hug from someone who doesn’t know their own strength. I love it under a slip dress. I have also nearly passed out wearing it to a four course dinner, which felt like a design flaw only in the moment I could not breathe.
Mara and I still haven’t resolved the actual argument, we just haven’t had a cold enough day since to bring it back up.
