How to tell if your skirt is too little before it’s too late.
Remember the finger tip test in middle school? You know, the way that your least favorite female teachers ensured that the bottoms of your shorts or skirts reached the ends of your fingers?
Well, my friends, the game has changed. In the office place, a skirt that easily passes the finger tip or knee-length test can still betray you in the heat of battle. That’s because, unlike in middle school, the real test happens not when you walk in, but when you sit down.
A Hemline Horror Story
It happened to me. I walked into my boss’s office prepared to present a carefully researched and painstakingly punctuated memo. I was poised to offer up a masterpiece—the missing piece to a puzzle that we had mulled over for weeks.
My boss was still on a conference call, but he motioned an invitation to enter, gesturing to the overstuffed armchair facing his large, mahogany desk. As I sunk into the seat, intending to take one last moment to sift through my papers, I inhaled sharply. Nothing but thighs.
My skirt, which had seemed chic and appropriate in my full length mirror that morning, had all but disappeared.
Before I could regain control of my racing thoughts, the conference call abruptly ended and my boss looked up inquisitively—“Well?”
I did not deliver a masterpiece that day.
The Take Away:
Since that harrowing experience, I have learned to test the length of my hemlines—in dressing rooms or before I leave my house in the morning—while sitting down.
I’ve found that the looks can be deceiving and not all hemlines are equal—an A-line skirt and a pencil skirt of the same length will look very different when sitting down because of the way that the fabric falls.
Pro-Tip
If you really want to do your due diligence, it may help to sit in a deep chair, [like the sandpit my boss keeps in his office].
In A Nutshell
Before you buy a dress or skirt, pull up a chair and have a seat!