Today’s maxi reflects a shifting cultural climate.


Jean Rhys knew a thing or two about style and, in particular, about the hauteur conveyed by the sweep of a hem. In her novel “Wide Sargasso Sea,” a Goth-tinged prequel to “Jane Eyre,” Christophine, a servant, lets the tail of her skirt fan out behind her - a gesture of breeding, the reader is told.

Today the style - long, lean and willowy - is fast gaining traction on Manhattan streets as a new generation of early adopters discovers the attractions of a trailing hem.

“There is definitely a movement to a very lengthy look, especially among the young,” said Nevena Borissova, a partner in Curve, a progressive retailer with stores in New York, Los Angeles and Miami. Ms. Borissova favors radically stretched-out skirts and dresses that “drag on the floor, with raw edges, and worn with combat boots,” she said.

There is nothing remotely prim or overly sweet about the latest interpretations of this look, with their distinctly urban overtones. Current versions, even the most languid, are likely to be toughened up with a military parka or a biker jacket and thick-soled shoes. The new maxis are “darker and more sophisticated” than last summer’s flounced beach dresses, said Morgan Yakus, a partner in No.6, a haven for style-setters in downtown Manhattan. They are “fashion’sbacklash to the short skirt,” Ms. Yakus suggested.

Cool-weather variations from houses as diverse as Louis Vuitton, Haider Ackermann, Ann Demeulemeester and Missoni, and even the calf-length renditions Marc Jacobs unveiled in New York last winter, are “really going to change women’s eyes,” said Sharon Graubard, a senior executive with Stylesight, a trend forecasting firm in New York.

Spawned, though rather tepidly received, in the 1970s, the latest maxis have been filtered through the hair-shirt sensibility of the early ‘90s, when excessive consumption gave way to an attitude of piety exemplified by a kind of monastic look - “fashion’s little penance,” as Amy Spindler termed it in The New York Times in 1993.

Today the fluid but rigorously plain maxis reflect a subtly shifting cultural climate born in the wake of the financial meltdown. Maxi-dressing “speaks to a movement,” said Colleen Sherin, the women’s fashion director of Saks Fifth Avenue, adding that the subdued and often monochromatic skirts and dresses appeal “to women who want something less ostentatious and care more about quality than flash.” Will the streetlength skirt endure? That depends. “People are waiting to see trendsetters like Kate Moss wearing it,” Ms. Borissova of Curve suggested. “Then they’ll take a chance.”

She maintained, nonetheless, that by fall, a long, lean silhouette could be driving sales. “Five years from now,” she insisted , “we’ll all be wearing maxis.”


By RUTH LA FERLA