Pencil Skirt Parameters

"how can I tell if my pencil skirt is too tight"

"how do I know if my pencil skirt is too tight?"

"how tight are pencil skirts suppose to be"

"how to tell if a skirt is too tight"

"how to tell when a pencil skirt is too small"

"is your pencil skirt too tight"

"pencil skirt tight"

"pencil skirt bunch"

I've been doing some thinking. 

Listed above are the terms that most often lead to my blog. More often than not, they will lead you to this posting from two years ago: Is my pencil skirt too tight? 

Looking over that posting, while it is well-intentioned and I really have no qualms about embarrassing myself with example pictures, I feel as though the posting could stand to be revisited and made a little more clear and comprehensive. You don't wear club wear to work, and you don't wear your work clothes to the club...unless you're a stripper. Apologies for the lack of embarrassing pictures this time around, I don't really have any horribly inappropriately tight pencil skirts...or maybe I just don't feel like being so self critical right now...

As the above statement implies, your pencil skirt can be too tight depending on the occasion for wearing it. With that confusion, lets setup some parameters for pencil skirt tightness. Given that I'm more scientifically minded, I think I'm probably going to have to develop a flow chart for this post, but for now, we'll just go down a list of relevant questions. We have 3 (THREE) main situations to consider:

1. Occasion
2. Fabric
3. Personal Comfort

Parameters for Skirt Tightness

1. Is this skirt for: WORK or PLAY?

First, any skirt for play can encompass work skirts, but it usually can't go the other way around. Secondly, for visuals on how a work pencil skirt should fit, look at: Ann Taylor, and JCrew. Most of the pencil skirts listed show an appropriate level of tightness for a work environment. If you don't like your butt being hugged at all, then go ahead and play in your work clothes. 

To see the fit for "play" pencil skirts, look at the pencil skirts listed at Urban Outfitters and American Apparel. It's a little unfortunate that most of the sites are limited in the scope of the sizes they chose for their live models (a lot of them are skinny with no butts or hips), but the Interlock Pencil Skirt from American Apparel provides a nice movie with someone a little more on the bodacious side.

Look at the pictures and the movies provided. While no one has a pencil skirt that is quite obviously ill fitting, there are a few movies where the person actually pulls their skirt down a bit - don't regard this as normal behavior, this is called "I'm uncomfortable with how much my skirt rides up" behavior.

2. Fabric

If you observe the sites listed in the first category, you'll see that generally, pencils skirts for the work environment are less stretchy while skirts for play have a higher degree of elastic to them.

On a skirt with very little stretch, trying to force your body into that situation means at least one if not all three of these things:

 - at some point the skirt will rip down the seam because you're putting too much stress on it.
 - with too much stress on fabric that has no give, your squishy parts will distribute to ease the stress on the fabric
 -your skirt will obviously bunch and pucker when you walk. You can refer back to the original post for the reference pictures.

I've gained more weight. The Happenstance Skirt has done everything but rip. 

Skirts with more elastic ("play" skirts) are suppose to hug your curves, but even elastic has it's limits and when you find your self reaching that limit, it's like the skirt has no stretch at all.

You're looking for friction, enough to hold your skirt in place, but not so much that your skirt will take the opportunity to bunch and pucker.

3. Personal comfort

Pencil skirts can be comfortable. It's not fashion dogma that they have to be uncomfortable. This is probably the question that brought you here in the first place. Do you like being in your pencil skirt? I'm no doctor, but I do know that tight clothing increases your blood clot risk.

Exceptions:

Pencils skirts with the RUCHING!!! Bunches up? It's suppose to. Look tight? It's suppose to. Feel good? I hope you do.

You should probably expand this. 

Is my pencil skirt too tight?

UPDATE: This topic has been revisited and updated here. Feel free to enjoy this particular posting anyway. - Christine

Seriously, I don't need to ask myself this question. I know my style preferences well enough to feel and know that my pencil skirt is too tight, but for some reason when googling and trying to find pictures, an inappropriately, unintentionally tight pencil skirt is hard to come across. I'm searching for validation. I'm told to do the "sit down" test without any real explanation of what I'm looking for. Luckily for curious people beyond this point I'm about to match a face to the madness that is a tight pencil skirt.

The first part is acceptance. You recognize that, for whatever reason, your pencil skirt just doesn't feel the way it use to. No matter how much you like the pattern, or how much you paid, unless you go to a tailor, there's no making your pencil fit like it use to. Once you get past that, along with any sentiments, you can more easily look at yourself objectively in your skirt and think "only a miracle will make me look good in this skirt." Then, start with the "Sit Down" test.

1.) When you stand up, does your skirt bunch at the hips (or any other place for that matter?)





2.) Do you need to pull your skirt down for it to regain it's shape?




Yes to any one of these means more likely than not, you're skirt is too tight. Constantly having to fix your skirt ruins the sex appeal of wearing a pencil skirt to begin with.
Here are more obvious signs that your pencil skirt it too tight:
When you walk, does your skirt bunch and rise up? This makes it so that you have to fix your skirt virtually all the time.
Does your butt go beyond the give of the skirt to where it distorts the shape? Pencil skirts are not suppose to flare out at the bottom.

Yes. It's too tight. It's times like these that you have to look yourself in the mirror and recognize that the clothes don't make the woman, but it's the woman that makes the clothes. This skirt is of no use to me if it only looks good on the hanger. I did contemplate sleeping in the skirt to see if I'd have any chance at changing the shape, but I think the skirt has enough stretch to make that plan fail miserably.

I bought this skirt over a year ago so returning it was a bit of a pickle. At Anthropologie, it only rings up the dead price (10 cents). There were some complications with the return, and personally, I'd rather keep a skirt that doesn't fit me than get $0.10 for it. Seeing that there is no real point in keeping a skirt that doesn't fit me...

Until I work up the time to get this skirt on eBay, it's on sale for $30. Email me for details.

Yoana Baraschi's Happenstance Skirt
done for Anthropologie
Size 0