Kid's Skirts & Skorts (Bottoms)

This heading holds two garments that behave differently. A skirt is a single tube or flare of fabric with nothing under it. A skort attaches shorts inside a skirt front or a full skirt panel, so the leg stays covered while the outside still reads as a skirt.

How the skirt is cut decides how it moves. A circle skirt is cut from a round of fabric, so it flares wide at the hem with no bulk gathered at the waist, and it is the shape that twirls. A gathered skirt is a rectangle pleated into a waistband, cheaper to make and thicker around the middle, adding width to a small child who has none. Inside almost all of them sits elastic. Better ones use the same buttonhole tape found in jeans so the waist can be taken in.

Leggings under a plain skirt solve the same coverage problem, at the cost of warmth on a hot day. A play dress joins the top and the skirt into one piece with nothing to tuck. Shorts alone cover more and read differently. Skorts exist so a child can hang upside down from a bar without thinking about it.

Uniform lists that specify coverage, tennis and netball, hot weather and children who climb are the reasons to choose one. A plain skirt with no shorts suits calmer settings and dressier days, but it becomes a problem the moment a child sits cross-legged on a classroom floor. Cold months need tights under either version, which changes the waist size you need.

Lift the skirt panel and see where the built-in shorts end. They should reach the skirt hem or sit below it, since shorts that stop higher defeat the entire design. Side seams that anchor the shorts to the skirt stop the two layers rotating apart in the wash. Tumble on low, because a hot dryer twists the inner short around the outer skirt and it never hangs straight again.