Wearing a skirt over pants is the latest fashion on the streets of Tokyo.

The "skirt on pants" style of wearing a skirt or one-piece dress over a pair of pants is in. When the fashion first started to gain in popularity among young women around the beginning of 2002, some people were so taken aback that they asked whether these women had mistakenly worn both a skirt and pants at once. But by spring and summer it had become a common sight, and the combination has won the nickname sukapan. It has become fashionable to wear "frilly skirts" - romantic, ballet-like skirts - with slender pants underneath to tone down the sugariness of the skirts. Also gaining in popularity are vests worn over shirts or even sweaters. The key to this fall's fashion is mixing feminine and boyish clothes.

Fashion Plus Function
Warmth and mobility are two factors adding to the popularity of the skirt-on-pants style. After the long-continued preference for pants, moreover, some women say they want to go back to skirts but are shy to expose their legs. The sukapan style offers them the alternative of wearing skirts without showing their legs.

Moving into fall, skirt styles are diversifying to include skirts with European rustic prints, exotic wrap skirts with Madras stripes, folkloric skirts using thick, warm-colored fabric, and cowgirl-style skirts with fringes. The majority of these skirts are soft and voluminous, and women commonly coordinate them with low-key pants, such as leggings or slim jeans. On top, meanwhile, they wear decorative blouses and shirts with a handmade touch - with fringes, for example, or lace-up fronts, ribbons, elaborate embroidery or cutwork, and so forth.

Vests Are Back
While the skirt-on-pants style is currently the most popular among the layered fashions that have been in vogue for the last several years, vests worn over shirts and sweaters are also regaining currency. Vests came into style around the mid-1990s, but for some time after that they were not to be seen in department stores and fashion malls. This fall, though, all the major fashion brands are offering vests of various materials, from casual knits to leather and fur.

Fashion connoisseurs have been recommending new ways of wearing vests, like coordinating classy-looking vests with sleeveless blouses or simple T-shirts. Vests are making their way into fashions for a wide variety of occasions, from business to dates. As with the skirt-on-pants style, the latest way of wearing vests stylishly is to match up items of different materials or effects, with one layer being boyish or casual and another being feminine and sweet.