FashBlog.com

Last week I covered leggings and I thought I'd branch out a bit and trace the evolution of my very favorite fashion item, pants. I look really ridiculous in skirts and dresses, being a short fat girl and all, so pants are my friend. I've also always found skirts and dresses to be very restrictive from a movement perspective...if you could see the way I'm sitting right now, you'd understand why. Not a day in a dress passed without me spending most of it focusing on keeping my legs closed so the world didn't get a Sharon Stone-ish view of my hoo hoo (alas, I wear underwear so there would be some disappointed hoo hoo peekers, but those that are into the whole undie thing would no doubt be pleased). And for the life of me, I can never get the shoes right. I had a fine time in my goth years when I could wear striped tights and my trusty Doc Martens...but try to dress me up for a wedding and I'll no doubt turn into a frumpy old woman with the shoes to prove it. I can sort of pull of the hippie thing if I wear my Birkis, but other than that...scary.

So, pants. How did they get here when humans started out naked and then wrapped in fur pieces? You can thank horses. Ancient Nomads in Europe in Asia traveled everywhere on horseback and invented them to make the process more pleasant...warmer, less rubbing, ideal for maneuvering through thick scratchy brush. In China, as early as 375 BC, members of the calvary wore them exclusively...no one else in their society was permitted to do so. The were seen on and off as culture permitted until the 16th century when they really took off. Men at that time were wearing hose that tied at the top but left their bits hanging free, which became a problem when skirts got shorter and shorter. The codpiece took care of that for a while, but good lord who the hell liked wearing THOSE? Okay, I'm sure some fellas dug it...but the codpiece got smaller and became part of the hose and became breeches. There you have it...pants. Even that long ago they had a fly front for easy elimination. Fascinating. The breech type pant was worn all the way into the 1930s, also known as pantaloons or knickers.

But Rowan, that's all well and good, but we want to know about JEANS. Yeah, me too. I wear only jeans unless forced to don something 'nice', and then I go for linen. Would you believe that we have sailors to thank for jeans? They began wearing something called galligaskins and moved to denim when it became available because it was so durable. Denim was worn by folks in the Old West here in the States, and we've never looked back after all these years. I haven't, anyway.

The acceptable wearing of pants by women didn't happen until well into the middle of the 20th century, but they HAVE been worn historically for hundreds of years. There were a group of coal miners called the pit brow girls that were the talk of Victorian society because they wore pants while working...they still wore their mandated skirts, but on top of the pants and all tucked in a the waist. Good for them, and thank you, I say!

Women working out west in the 1800s also wore pants, as did 'flygirls' and other working women into the 1920s. Katherine Hepburn and Marlene Dietrich helped things along by wearing pants in public in the 1930s. With the onset of WWII, women went to work for the first time in full force, doing the jobs of the men on duty...pants had become a necessity. After WWII, it became socially acceptable for women to be seen in such attire on casual basis as well. In 1960, trousers hit the fine fashion market and have been on many a runway since.

There are still many cultures worldwide and religions within our own borders that prohibit women from wearing pants and force them to wear skirts and dresses...an attempt at hiding their natural form and to make them 'asexual'. Seeing the formed legs of a woman in public, covered or not, is an offense to these sort of folks and to their god. To each his own, but I'm glad I'm not in THAT camp. I can't imagine trying to do all my daily chores, working, cleaning, playing with my kid...all while in an ankle length dress. The horror!