“A Dirndl is a type of traditional dress worn in southern Germany and Austria, based on the historical costume of Alpine peasants.”

A dirndl skirt is that high waisted, full skirt that your grandmother probably wears. I know my granny wears them. And so does my mom. And that’s a good thing, as I searched through her closet a lot for this post. However, I’ll keep my eyes open in my future thrift shopping trips. Here is a drawing and photo (1st row, 1st pic; 2nd row, 1st pic) of the actual German costume called “dirndl” [I know, it's so hard to pronounce] and one of the skirt (2nd pic). Also, I found some street style looks from the Sartorialist (2nd row, first pic) and AltamiraNYC. Etno skirt with leather jacket? Yes, yes, yes!

The fashion critic Suzy Menkes wrote about these kind of skirts, particularly about the ones from the Marni show (bottom collage, 1st row): “the new fashion volumes: a big, airy blouse over an equally featherweight, calf-length dirndl skirt, a new silhouette that is the big experiment of the Milan shows“, which is definitely noting new in fashion, but it it new as a shape used for skirts lately (in the runway shows for the next spring summer season). After the overload of mini skirts and bubble shapes last seasons, straight shapes for this fall, it was natural that the designers would turn to the exact opposite: big, mid-length, full skirts. And I am glad about that, because it’s very figure friendly, comfortable and certainly not that hard to wear like, let’s say, the mini-skirt, for which the most important and surreal accessory was a pair of killer legs.

Looks from Marni (top) and Prada (bottom) for spring/summer08. [Image credit: style.com]

Initially, I remembered that my mom had a big skirt with a traditional German print on it, but I couldn’t find it. However, I found these cute skirts with different patters, flower prints and geometric ones. Next week I’ll start my last year of University, so I wanted to try some autumn-y, casual looks. I must say, I can’t wait to experiment more, and I’m sure that whenever I’m sick of them, my mom will gladly wear them herself again.

Hopefully we’ll see more of these skirts in Paris, as I really think this shape is very womanly and figure friendly, compared to the micro mini we’ve seen everywhere in the past, dare I say: it’s a breath of fresh air.