My skirts have been getting longer since this summer. I’ve gone from mostly knee-length with the odd shorter skirt, to mostly mid-calf-length. It started because to-the-knee skirts and dresses, which I relied on as the Prada-esque grown-up-cool length for years, began to feel a bit office-wear. And not in a retro Mad Men way, just in a regular Monday morning way. A longer skirt makes me feel more sophisticated. (I am not at all sure the longer length actually does me any favours, but you can’t have everything.)
Anyway, the whole Below The Knee thing was going really smoothly. My midi skirts enabled a deeply satisfying dig-from-the-back-of-the-cupboard revival of two near-redundant categories of shoes: a pair of silver and a pair of black pointy kitten heels both totally worked, but only as long as I could brave bare legs; after that I switched to knee-length boots – black stretchy ones, and wrinkly tan suede ones – I hadn’t worn since the dark ages.
But then we hit coat season, and the wheels fell off my new look. I thought a cropped, waist-length jacket would work, but it seemed awkward and mismatched. And my coats are mostly knee-length, which is completely wrong with a long skirt. A wool coat over an only-slightly-longer, floaty skirt works fine, because the effect is kind of like a frill of fabric at the bottom of your coat. But layer a knee-length coat over a thick BTK skirt and suddenly you’re a Downton Abbey housemaid running errands.
Counterintuitively, the coat length that goes best with a mid-calf skirt is one that ends mid-thigh. It works in the same way a hip-length jacket worked with a knee-length skirt: both pieces have grown a few inches, but the proportions remain in balance. It takes some getting used to, when you’re accustomed to a neater silhouette, because you feel a bit drowned at first. And it can feel downbeat: you can turn this around if you include a pale, fluffy or sparkly piece, to lift the mood. Add to that the fact that this coat is most likely in your wardrobe already – didn’t you wear it with flat-front trousers and a V-neck sweater? – and the look becomes a winter warmer, in every sense.
• Jess wears coat, £120, wallis.co.uk. Top, £39.99, zara.com. Skirt, £195, whistles.co.uk. Heels, £58, topshop.com
Photograph: David Newby for the Guardian. Styling: Melanie Wilkinson. Hair and makeup: Laurence Close
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