BELFAST, NORTHERN IRELAND – FEBRUARY 27: Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge visits the National Stadium in Belfast, home of the Irish Football Association on February 27, 2019 in Belfast, Northern Ireland. Prince William last visited Belfast in October 2017 without his wife, Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge, who was then pregnant with the couple’s third child. This time they concentrate on the young people of Northern Ireland. Their engagements include a visit to Windsor Park Stadium, home of the Irish Football Association, activities at the Roscor Youth Village in Fermanagh, a party at the Belfast Empire Hall, Cinemagic -a charity that uses film, television and digital technologies to inspire young people and finally dropping in on a SureStart early years programme. (Photo by Pool/Samir Hussein/WireImage)
On Thursday, the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge put on their game faces to play with members of the Lawn Tennis Association’s youth program. Naturally, the Duchess dressed for the occasion, wearing a cream-colored retro tennis jumper from Polo Ralph Lauren — which she recycled from a 2019 soccer match at Windsor Park in Belfast, Ireland — with black capris and her go-to Superga sneakers. And while the couple’s official Instagram account was quick to mark Prince William’s team the winner, with an outfit like Middleton’s, we beg to differ.
Though Middleton rarely falls for one-off fashion trends, instead opting to stay true to her own classic style, apparently, tenniscore is one even she can’t refuse. The trend, which first appeared last summer in the form of tennis skorts and courtside photoshoots, has once again begun garnering attention in the fashion world. As recently as this month, Brooks Brothers partnered with Fila for a tennis-inspired collection, while tennis star Coco Gauff fronted the campaign for the forthcoming Casablanca x New Balance collaboration.
According to global fashion shopping platform Lyst, retro tennis attire is currently trending, with page views for tennis skirts tripling in the last month. Meanwhile, searches for vintage “tennis club” logo sweatshirts are up 14%, compared to this time last year. Now that Middleton’s hopped aboard the trend, we can only imagine what those numbers will look like as the summer progresses.
Given that Middleton was named the patron of the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club in 2016, when she took over for the Queen after a 64-year stint in the position, we’re not exactly surprised that she’d feel a kinship toward this particular trend. That’s to say, we’re not complaining: The more tennis fashion inspo, the better — especially with Wimbledon just a month away.
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Generation TikTok has discovered skorts, and now the skirt-shorts hybrids — ranging from sporty tennis styles to preppy, pleated versions — are everywhere. Meanwhile, the skort-heavy golf-girl aesthetic #BevCartGirls, inspired by the account of the same name and referring to the beverage carts that abound on golf courses, has garnered more than 25 million views on the platform.
This extends to fashion off the platform, too. Activewear brands like Outdoor Voices and Girlfriend Collective are offering athletic versions, while vintage stores like Awoke Vintage are selling out of the more fanciful varieties (think: bright colors and ’80s-inspired patterns). According to Mercari, the marketplace saw a 212% search increase for the item, compared to the same time last year, and thousands of new “skort” listings in May alone.
“The skort comeback is partly the result of a nostalgic yearning for the ’90s and the romanticizing of back-to-school fashion that was unfortunately missed during the pandemic lockdown,” says Maria Coilero, Senior Youth Strategist at fashion trend forecaster Fashion Snoops. She also credits ‘90s reboots, like Cruel Summer and The Craft, with facilitating the rise of the trend.
How the skort went viral on TikTok
TikTok-ers are currently posting videos of themselves reimagined as ‘00s pop stars like Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera, wearing skorts with baby tees and cropped halter tops. While the expectation was that fashion would be on hiatus during the Covid-19 outbreak, Coilero says TikTok has turned out to be an asset for retailers as Gen-Z used the platform to justify dressing up.
“This resulted in a virtual space where trends could circulate with a large reach of viewers at an extremely rapid pace,” she explains. For example, during the pandemic, Dark Academia, a bookish fashion aesthetic that is big on tweed and cardigans, emerged at the top of the viral video food chain, helping the skort become an instant hit.
“Dark Academia is where we began to see the romanticization of back-to-school uniform dressing,” Coilero explains. “It introduced the tailored skort as an appealing new item that Gen-Z was quite unfamiliar with. This was the gateway to an entirely new look that cultivated the perfect space for skorts to come into the forefront.”
The skort’s origin story
“The skort’s popularity can also be connected to the fact that Gen-Z is obsessed with the ’90s and ’00s aesthetics, and has taken the time to explore the archives of those decades and rework them in a way that feels relevant to them,” explains Coilero.
But the skort’s history goes back even further. According to Paige Rubin, a vintage luxury buyer who is pursuing a master’s degree in fashion history at FIT, the skort’s origins trace to the bloomers, flowy pants worn underneath skirts in the 1850s, that allowed women to be free of the cumbersome hems and crinolines that were in fashion at the time.
“They were mocked at the time, but by the end of the century women became more active,” says Rubin. The fashion for tennis and bike riding eventually gave rise to the 1930s trend of wearing a tennis skirt with shorts underneath (though nobody was saying “skort” yet). In the 1950s, the skort was introduced as a new and revolutionary product, with its own dedicated spread in Life magazine.
The skort enabled women to engage in pursuits like gardening, biking, and sports. “In many ways, the birth of the skort helped women find a place in outdoor activities as it offered a solution to comfort dressing that was both feminine and practical,” says Coilero. “Women entering the world of competitive sports gave the skort new importance as it became a staple item in tennis, hockey, and golf uniforms.” The garment’s built-in modesty would come to win over school administrations, who selected skorts as part of official school uniforms, the likes of which have a new place in the Dark Academia aesthetic.
Why is the skort trending right now?
Today, the skort is relevant for several reasons. According to Coilero, while fashion has “evolved greatly,” the skort hasn’t fallen out of favor when it comes to comfort dressing, a category that exploded in the last year.
Then there is the versatility factor. “It can be a really easy, flexible piece; ready for activity at the same time as being comfortable enough for leisure and lounging, and this suits our pandemic-era priorities,” says Emily Gordon-Smith, director of Consumer Product at trends intelligence company Stylus. “However, it’s also quite daring and flirty and taps into our desire to be dressing up a bit more.”
One of the other reasons the TikTok generation is drawn to skorts, Rubin says, is that they lend themselves to creative styling. The style also fits under the bigger Y2K fashion trend that’s currently taking off on the platform. “[Users are] really riffing off a ’00s-era vintage vibe and styling the skort with cropped halter tops and baby tees as well as tiny cardigans,” says Gordon-Smith. “Anything that was big in the ’00s is key.”
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If you have struggled to find the middle ground between lockdown loungewear and full-blown party attire in the wake of nationwide reopenings, this rising footwear trend is for you. On Wednesday, global fashion shopping platform Lyst named “pillow sandals,” — flip-flop- and slide-style sandals with padded, pillow-like straps — as one of the hottest shoe trends of the summer. According to their most recent data drop, which was crafted using consumer shopping data from over 100 million online shoppers, searches for “pillow” and “puffy” sandals have spiked by 129% in May.
No doubt that has to do with the style’s versatility. Padded shoes are not only comfortable but, thanks to labels like Staud and Miu Miu — two of the most searched for brands for this trend, according to Lyst — they can also look chic. Staud’s Rita sandals feature a thong-style toe that’s made of soft, black-, white-, or camel-colored leather. Meanwhile, Miu Miu’s iteration is available in a flatform, as well as a variety of strap styles and colors, from multi-color to monochrome. Roam (another most-searched brand, according to Lyst), Rejina Pyo, Proenza Schouler, and Bottega Veneta, all, too, sell footwear styles that will make even the most flip-flop-adverse reconsider their sandal collection.
After a year of wearing matching Entireworld sweatsuits and house slippers, our brains aren’t equipped to flip the sartorial switch right away. Instead, we need to slowly transition into dressing for something other than a Friday night on the sofa. And for that, only sandals that look and feel like pillows will do.
Shop one of this season’s top footwear trend, below.
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Cameron Bishop grew up thrifting because it was what he could afford.
Bishop was a prolific upcycler in his teens, hacking and refashioning his secondhand wares into unique, custom pieces. Once, he came across a band T-shirt he didn’t have the money to buy, so he spent hours recreating the logo with fabric markers on a secondhand tee. Other times, he added buttons and patches to spice up his finds.
Despite his creativity, Bishop, now 31 and living in Minneapolis, says his unique wardrobe was as much a survival tool as a vehicle of self-expression. His family didn’t have a lot of money, but his mom worked at an elite private school in Atlanta that Bishop attended for part of high school, so he grew up the odd kid out among a cohort of teens who had elevators in their homes and Gucci pieces in their closets. For Bishop, wearing thrifted garments was a financial necessity, and altering them was a way to take control of his own narrative.
“As a kid, I wanted to stick out because I wanted to beat my community to the punch,” he says. “If I was going to appear different, I wanted to be intentional about looking different.”
But when he started making his own money as an adult, Bishop abandoned the fabric markers. While working as a business consultant, he found himself shopping for a new outfit every time he landed a new client. “It felt like I finally had the ability to appear successful,” he says. “I always bought the outfit that I thought conveyed the message the client wanted me to convey to them.”
Bishop’s experience with secondhand clothing as a source of agency, creativity, and shame all at once point to the complex cocktail of reasons that many people still avoid used clothing, despite its growing popularity.
The resale market has experienced remarkable growth and cultural favor in recent years: According to a report by online secondhand platform ThredUp, the U.S. secondhand market will more than triple in value over the next decade. While other forms of retail floundered during the pandemic, the secondhand market kept growing. When TikTok started to take Gen Z by storm, the app was quickly filled with expert Depop sellers and “thrift flippers,” creators who upcycle secondhand pieces into more on-trend creations. Even the luxury labels that long sought to keep their goods from being consigned have started to get in on the secondhand action, with brands like Gucci and Alexander McQueen forging partnerships with luxury resellers like The RealReal and Vestiaire Collective, respectively.
One of the factors driving this growth is the increase in public awareness of fashion’s negative environmental impact. Buying secondhand keeps clothing out of landfills and, if it replaces shopping for brand-new items, can decrease demand for raw material extraction used to create the fibers spun into fabric.
“I’ve always had a tense relationship with clothing… Add to that even more digging to try and find something that fits at a secondhand store, and it’s just not worthwhile.”
Kendall Vanderslice
Still, barriers to shopping secondhand persist for many people. Some have to do with stigmas like the one Bishop faced, while others cite the trouble with finding secondhand clothing that fits. Since secondhand stores are stocked with one-offs, finding a garment that’s the right size is part of the challenge for anyone. But it’s especially tricky for people who don’t wear straight sizes.
Kendall Vanderslice falls in between “plus” and “straight” sizing — clothing from the former tends to be cut right for her body but a bit too big, while the latter are often too small, not cut right, or both. As a result, finding clothes has always been tough. On the rare occasion she does end up in a thrift store with friends or family, she almost never finds anything to take home.
“It’s already an emotional process to go shopping,” says the Durham, North Carolina-based 30-year-old. “I’ve always had a tense relationship with clothing and spending a long time looking in mirrors at the shape of things on my body. Add to that even more digging to try and find something that fits at a secondhand store, and it’s just not usually worthwhile.”
Vanderslice, at her in-between size, doesn’t even experience the worst of it — people who wear sizes larger than hers have an even harder time finding secondhand shopping options that work. It’s long been noted that the fashion industry fails fat people; the secondhand market is no better. While there are some vintage and secondhand stores that focus on plus-size clothing, like Plus BKLYN and Two Big Blondes, they’re few and far between.
But even some people who could easily shop secondhand based on their size don’t for other reasons.
Therese Morillo is an accountant in the Bay Area whose favorite place to shop for clothes is Target. She has never been secondhand shopping in her life. Morillo insists that she’s not against secondhand per se — about half of her kids’ wardrobes consist of items passed down from their cousins — but she’s uncomfortable with the idea of wearing clothing from strangers. She says it’s hard to shake the idea that clothes purchased from thrift shops are “dirty” in a way that can’t be eradicated by one cycle in her washing machine. After volunteering for an organization that required her to sort donated clothing, she’s never forgotten the feeling of pawing through unwashed donations. But there’s also a deeper level to her hesitance.
“It’s like the energy and the bad luck of the person could come into my life, especially if they wore the piece every single day.”
Therese Morillo
A first-generation Filipino immigrant who moved to California as a kid, Morillo was raised to avoid thrift shopping. While secondhand shopping is immensely popular in her birth country — ukay-ukay stores, as thrift shops are called, can be found every few blocks in the capital city of Manila — it’s also not uncommon to view secondhand clothing with suspicion. There’s a common idea in the Filipino culture that clothing and jewelry can hold onto the energy or spirit of previous owners. (One Filipina celebrity’s hack is to spray newly purchased secondhand goods with disinfectant and holy water before wearing.)
“It sounds so crazy saying it out loud, but it’s like the energy and the luck or bad luck of the person could come into my life, especially if they wore the piece every single day,” says Morillo. “Wearing it can somehow rub off on you. So unless I know the person, I’d be wary.”
Not everyone’s barriers to secondhand shopping are quite so metaphysical. For Bishop, the stigma of shopping secondhand gradually lifted. After years of avoiding secondhand, he found himself drawn back to thrift stores. Part of what sparked his return was seeing his sister selling secondhand designer goods online. Rather than associating resale with other peoples’ worn cast-offs, he could now see it as a way to build the Gucci wardrobe of his teenage dreams.
Beyond that, Bishop began to reflect on his fraught feelings about clothing that wasn’t brand-new. He came to see that insecurity was at the heart of his approach to dressing, both as a thrift-savvy teen and then as a new-suit-loving adult. Part of what helped him move beyond that was meditating on Leviticus, a book of ancient laws in both Christian and Jewish scriptures. Bishop understood it as “a book about our relationship with the earth and with each other.” Though it might not initially seem like the kind of literature that would inspire a fashion breakthrough, it shifted how Bishop understood his relationship with clothes.
“I was seeing a greater purpose with a lot of things in my life, and fashion was one of those things,” he explains. “I wanted to have a proper relationship with the earth through what I wore.”
This revelation ultimately landed Bishop back where he started: as an avid thrifter, but this time by choice.
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