It’s 12 noon on a Saturday and I’m wearing a skirt on the 36 bus to Victoria with my wife. The eyes of two schoolboys in football strips widen and they briefly smirk but their attention quickly moves on. The driver didn’t react when I touched in. The young Muslim woman I sat beside seemed unfased by my bare knees.
An hour later I’m walking along the Chelsea Embankment and three workmen do a quick double take at my swishing calves, but their surprise turns — I swear — to admiration. My skirt passes unremarked at the Savour Festival in the Chelsea Hospital, and later draws high praise from my fellow guests at a 70th birthday party in a Hammersmith pub basement. “You look beautiful,” says a woman I’ve never met, and a retired CEO looks frankly jealous. In this test of London’s tolerance for non-conventional menswear, my city has done me proud: a few people are enthusiastic but most of them simply don’t notice.
