Who wears the pants

I don't know what to call this style of skirt that's split at the front and worn over pants (it's kind of a train, kind of a cape, and kind of a skirt), but I've been seeing it often lately.

There's been at least one at every red carpet I know of since the beginning of the year (that's Janelle Monáe at the Oscars, Kerry Washington at the Tonys, and Issa Rae just a few days ago at the Emmys), and this summer saw the advent of the romper version.

[Images from Popsugar, Refinery29, and eBay]

It was about midway through summer when I decided I had to have one, and I knew the perfect skirt to make it possible.

It's a sheer chiffon off-white skirt that I got in one of my first Swap.com orders, but never really was happy with. It was too short to be a dramatic maxi, too opaque to do that see-through layering look I was so infatuated with for a while, and the black waistband made it difficult to color-coordinate.

To make it into a split overskirt (that's the name I'm going with!), I opened up the back seam, removed the entire skirt from the waistband, and reattached it so that the front 1/4 of the waistband was left open.

I finished the edges with a rolled hem (a really bad one—when am I going to get the hang of that technique!?), and I was finished!

Though I really wanted to try this skirt over shorts, I realized with the end of summer almost here, I might not have another semi-dressy occasion before the weather turns, so I decided to wear it to work, with pants instead. After all, I needed One New Thing for Wednesday, and my stash was finally running pretty low.

The skirt was a perfect match for my khaki pants. I tried it on with every top in my wardrobe, and decided the length was best on this pink and yellow one. Today's color scheme is almost identical to the one I used the first time I wore this blouse, but this time around, I switched up the colors of my shoes and earrings: yellow on the bottom, pink on top!