The Fashion Police’s undercover officers are infiltrating fashion retailers around the country in order to bring you honest, unbiased reviews of the clothing and footwear they find there. Today, they visit Le Redoute to investigate a bright green mini skirt…
Officer: The officer’s identity has been concealed in order not to blow his cover. We can, however, reveal that our officer is 6ft tall, with a waist size of 34″-36″, and is a MAN. Note: THIS IS NOT YOUR CHIEF OF POLICE!)
Sizing: Where do we start? This skirt is a UK size 6, which, in my experience (this is the Chief of Police speaking, by the way, although, once again, I feel I need to stress that I am NOT the gentleman in the photo!) corresponds roughly with the much-maligned US size 0. Most size charts will tell you that this is not the case, and that a US 0 corresponds to the rarely-seen UK size 4, however, as someone who shops a lot in both countries, I can tell you that while that may once have been the case, these days a UK6 = US0. Typically, you’d expect an item of this size to have a 24″ waist: our officer’s waist is at least 10″ larger than that, and while the skirt is obviously tighter on him than it appears on the model, that still tells you that the sizing here is seriously off.
What it SHOULD look like
In fairness to La Redoute, our officer didn’t zip the skirt up all the way in these photos, purely because it will (obviously) have to be returned, and we didn’t want to risk damaging it. However, although it would’ve been a bit of a squeeze, it could have been done without too much difficulty. I’d say that if you wanted to wear this, you’d have to go down AT LEAST two, maybe three sizes, to get anything like the right fit. If you normally wear a size 6, meanwhile, that’s too bad: Redoute do offer a size 4 in this particular item, but it’s currently sold out, and given how far out the sizing of this one was, I wouldn’t think one size down would be that much better.
Oh, dear...
Quality:
OK, now for the positive part: sizing aside, this was a really lovely skirt. The material is thick, high quality, and looks like it would wear well. It’s fully lined, and is very nicely made, with concealed pockets, a vibrant colour and a nice, 60s-style design. For £15, I’d say this would be excellent value for money IF the fit was truer to size.
Officer’s comments:
I was really disappointed with the sizing issues with this skirt. We’re all used to variations in sizing between brands, and even between different items from the same brand, but for something to be several sizes larger (or, indeed smaller) than it should be is just ridiculous, and, as I said above, sizes people at the smaller end of the scale out of the market altogether. If a UK6 fits more like a UK12, then you’re excluding everyone smaller than a size 12 from shopping with you, (I’m not saying this skirt would fit a size 12, by the way: I actually have no idea what its true size would be.) which seems pretty short-sighted.
Is this just a one-off? Sadly, I don’t think so. To answer the obvious questions, I double and triple checked both the size label and the dispatch notice to make sure I’d been sent the correct size, and they both labelled the skirt as expected. I guess there’s a chance that the wrong label was attached in the factory, but, having just returned a La Redoute order a couple of weeks ago – this time because items labelled size 4-6 were too large – I’m inclined to think they’re being generous with their sizing, although I’d be very happy to be wrong about that: they’re one of the very few retailers in the UK who stock size 4, for instance, so it would be a shame to see vanity-sizing take away that variety.
VERDICT: Returned.
Anyone else ever shopped with La Redoute? How did you find it?
Aqua are becoming serial offenders in the real of Strange Skirts: and Strange Other Items, too, to be perfectly honest. We think they’ve outdone themselves with this Half Maxi/Half Mini, though. Come on, Aqua, make your minds up! Surely no one is THIS indecisive? Look, even the model is starting to get all huffy:
Not content with a skirt that will leave one leg out in the cold, however, Aqua continued the strangeness with this Shirt-With-a-Tail:
They call it a “dress”. We call it “what a Fashion Criminal Superhero would wear, if there actually were Fashion Criminal Superheroes. Which there isn’t: there are only villains in the world of Fashion Criminals.”
And just to prove that we’re not totally biased against dresses with weird long bits attached to them, we don’t hate this one:
Oh, who are we kidding? We DO hate it. Just not as much as the other two. Because once you’ve looked at those, even this starts to look not-so-bad, don’t you think?
Ah, the humble pencil skirt! It’s a true fashion classic, and we’re very glad about that, because the pencil skirt is a Fashion Police favourite, which adds a touch of sophistication to just about any outfit. We’re particularly glad to see so many of them around this winter: it would be wrong to call the current range of pencil skirts a “trend”, because it’s a look that never really gets old, but if it’s a look that you love, you’ve no doubt been finding it a whole lot easier to create it recently, thanks to the many pencil skirts, in every conceivable colour and print, which have been flooding the high street.
(Special credit here to Topshop and River Island for their excellent work in bringing the pencil skirt to the masses this winter: we appreciate it.)
For this roundup, we’ve imposed a “£100-or-less” rule (OK, there’s one skirt which is £101, but we’re not going to quibble over that extra £1), in order to show you some things you might actually buy, rather than drifting off into Fantasy Shop territory.
Tell us: what do you think of pencil skirts? Do you own any? What do you wear with them?
Good old Zara! The Spanish chain comes to the rescue once again, helping us save £478, were we in the market for a two-toned skirt with white panels at the front and black ones at the side. If we WERE looking for such a thing, we could buy it from Dries Van Noten. It would cost us £504, though, so we have to admit, we’d be much more likely to head to Zara, spend £25.99 and still have enough left for a top and shoes to wear with it, and maybe some lunch while we were out.
The Zara skirt is currently sold out on the website, but can be found on eBay (where you can probably expect to pay more than £25.99), or in-store, if you’re lucky. If you just can’t find it anywhere, though, well, you could always cough up £500 for the designer version, here.
You’re already poised to tell us how much you adore these, aren’t you? So today, we’re asking you to explain the appeal. Because while many of our readers think feathered skirts are the cat’s pyjamas, we, on the other hand, tend to think they’re almost as comical as cat’s pyjamas. Seriously, you’re seeing fun, “edgy” fashion here, but we’re just seeing the skinned hydes of Elmo and Grover:
Fashion Icons, 2011
We’re also seeing the glimmerings of a Halloween costume idea, but we don’t want to pay £80 for the privilege, which is what one of these skirts will cost you.
Tell us what we’re missing here, folks. What is it about feathered skirts that makes so many women love them? If you can do this without using the words “quirky” or “edgy” or the phrase “bang on trend”, then you win a cookie from Cookie Monster himself.
Behold the red skater skirt! Not exactly a hot trend item – well, you know, it’s a red skirt: they’ve been around forever, and they’ll probably be around forever more. There are a few more of them around than usual this summer, though, probably because of the whole 50s vibe that’s going on in fashion right now, and which has seen the swirly skirt rise to prominence once more, whether attached to dresses, or on its own.
Skirts like these are available in lots of different colours at the moment. We particularly like them in red, though, because they have a very classic feel that’s just begging to be work with something like a striped sweater or knotted white shirt, and a simple pair of ballet flats. So the two skirts above get the Fashion Police thumbs up: the only question remaining is, which one would we buy?
The question is, of course, a strictly hypothetical one, obviously. Sadly, a police officer’s salary doesn’t stretch to £910 – or £910 anything else’s, to be completely honest – so while we have no hesitation in saying that the Preen skirt shown on the left of the image above (click here to buy it from Far Fetch) is definitely the nicer of the two, with better quality fabric (at least, as far as we can tell from the image), and a higher waist, which can be more flattering to the figure with this particular style of skirt.
The River Island skirt, meanwhile (click here to buy it, although be aware that it’s sold out in many sizes, so you may have to look for it in-store instead) is made from good ol’ polyester, which accounts for the much lower price, but would be easy to throw on with a t-shirt and sandals for a cool summer look.
Does the low price make it more attractive to you, though? Well, actually, if we had to choose, we wouldn’t buy either of these. Nope, we’d actually buy this version of the River Island skirt, which is the midi-length version:
At £34.99, this one’s just a little more expensive than its shorter sister, but as well as creating a more 50s-inspired shape, the longer length is also more to our personal tastes, too, and we have to give props to River Island here for being one of the few brands around at the moment to recognise that one hem length does not suit all, and make at least some of its items available in two different lengths. (ASOS can take a bow for this too, although they don’t do it quite often enough for our liking!).
But we digress. Back to the issue at hand. If you were in the market for a red, skater-style skirt, which one of these would you go for, do you think. Would you SAVE or SPLURGE?
Heart telling you to jump aboard the midi-skirt bandwagon, but head telling you to stick to the minis you know and love?
Don’t worry, there IS a middle ground: a place where midi and mini meet, mate and live happily ever after. Or possibly not. That middle ground is occupied by Andrea Crews, who has set up camp there, and is busy producing her half midi/half maxi creations, which mix fabrics, as well as lengths.
If you think the example at the top of the page is bad, though, just wait until you get a look at THIS bad boy:
Oh HELL NO.
Denim and lace should NEVER collide, should they? It’s like a really bad day down at Dollywood. All it needs is a bleach-blonde perm (with the roots showing, natch) and a pair of white stilettos.
This, friends, is why The Fashion Police are imposing a new law banning this kind of experimentation of this kind. No good can come of it. These hybrids will take over the world, we tell you!
