FASHION : Skirting the Issue

Just because Donna Karan, Giorgio Armani, Dolce & Gabbana and Dries Van Noten have included skirts in their menswear collections doesn’t mean your ordinary Joe will ever wear one. But who wants to be ordinary? Uh, nobody at the Temple’s second annual Skirt Party and fashion show Saturday night. A pink tutu worn with pearls and a biker jacket didn’t even rate a second glance at this event, held at the West L.A. spot once occupied by Wolfgang Puck’s now-defunct brew pub, Eureka.

Men in skating skirts, sarongs and kilts crowded around the runway for the 11 p.m. show, while in an impromptu dressing room, wrap skirts were re-wrapped and silk rope belts retied. Surrounded by scantily clad male models, a woman whispered loudly to a friend: “I gave up Barbra Streisand tickets to be here.”

The difference between men’s and women’s skirts boils down to one word: “ Hips !” said designer Dean Harris--or the lack of them. John Bartlett solved the no-hips, no-waist problem by leaving his thrift-shop patchwork granny skirt completely unzipped for the night. “This is like something I always wanted to wear in high school but couldn’t,” he said with a laugh.

We asked one towering guy from New Zealand, who wore a wool wrap skirt, where he draws the line, skirt-wise. “That,” he sneered, motioning to a fellow in a fringed rayon mini. “You don’t want to look like a bad Tonya Harding.”