There are two basic reasons for why I don't wear a skirt very often:
1. Whenever I wear a skirt, people insist on pointing it out to me: "Oh my god! You're wearing a skirt!", "Hey, you're wearing a skirt!", "Hey, nice skirt!" (it's not - it's a boring brown skirt that wouldn't get a mention at all if I wore skirts more often)
2. Skirts just aren't as practical as pants. Wear a good pair of pants and you can do all sorts of things in them. Wear a skirt and suddenly you have to change the way you move - not for the better, either. You can't tackle obstacles as easily, you have to walk around things you would otherwise step over and you need to think carefully about the way you sit and stand. It's restrictive, and doesn't usually involve decent pockets. We all know how important pockets are in my universe.
Which is why I find this appealing:
Yes, that's right, it's a kilt with cargo pockets.
Also, a retractable tool loop, which I'm sure will come in very handy at some point. You know, when I start carrying around hammers as part of my duties... Oooh! - I could start carrying a mallet when going to help people with the public computers. That would be entirely appropriate.
I used to work for a guy who wore kilts as his normal day wear (and, for that matter, as his fancy evening wear). He would really only switch to pants of some description if he had to be up a ladder on a school ground. He always maintained that unbifurcated garments were superior in every way - especially for men (for reasons I won't elaborate). He also always maintained that kilts were for men - women wore "pleated skirts".
Which is just typical of the strangle hold men have on useful garments, frankly. Even when it comes to skirts, men get to claim the most practical garments for themselves.
Anyone who has ever worn a kilt knows it provides the greatest flexibility of movement with the lowest likelihood of flashing - add a sporran and you could jump over any obstacle you wanted without fear. There's a reason why highland laddies go running through the hills in their kilts, and the fellows at the highland games wear kilts for every sport (actually, there's a second reason for that: nudity is frowned upon for such events these days).
By the way, if you've ever taken a close look at a sporran, you would notice something instantly - it's just like a purse, only it's designed to stay out of the way and never be accidentally put down and forgotten - no matter what you do, it stays neatly in your lap. In other words: purses intended for men are more useful than purses designed for women.
I am tempted by these "utility kilts" for a number of reasons. For one thing, you get the practicability and freedom of a kilt without actually needing to commit to tartan - the plain colour could pass for a skirt, making it less obvious that I am (once again) resorting to menswear in order to avoid useless clothes. For another, it has pockets - thereby precluding the need for a sporran, which would draw attention to the fact that my "skirt" is actually a kilt. Thirdly, they are machine washable. If there is one thing I love more than pockets on a garment, it's the words "machine washable".
And, living in the Tropics, hemp seems like a better option than wool or synthetic blends.
The problem with this, though, is that if I actually bought and wore one of these things, I would eventually become a kilt wearing, banjo playing, juggling, bike collecting, multilingual Australian-Estonian librarian... and something tells me that's not normal.
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