Skirt-twirling – the way a skirt will rotate around your waist to right or left as you walk – is one of those annoyances I had never thought to discuss with anyone. Grumpygirl has though. She not only did an office survey to determine typical rotation directions but has begun measuring distance by how far her skirt twirls: “The walk from work to uni, for instance, takes aproximately three-quarters of a full rotation, whereas the walk from work to home takes a full two rotations.” Maybe I too will give up that constant self-correction: hitching stockings aligning skirt.

3 thoughts on “skirt-twirling

  1. real icon

    Reminds me of those two Cambridge physicists, Yong Mao and Thomas Fink, who developped a mathematical model for describing tie knots. (Fink obviously even used a similar kind of model for his thesis, “Inverse Protein Folding, Hierarchical Optimisation and Tie Knots”).

  2. lisa

    I think the amount of twirl would depend partly on the friction from slips, stockings, tights, whathaveyou.

    More friction, more twirl?

    Maybe this is why I don’t wear skirts?

  3. mcb

    I think it might be slightly dependant on the fabric of the skirt itself (at least, the speed with which the skirt twirls) and also the gait of the wearer.
    Clearly, I have too much time at the moment to think about useless things…

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