The rise of trousers

The 60's was a decade which broke loads of fashion traditions and featured a number of diverse trends, such as PVC clothes, mini skirts, tie-dye and batik fabrics, but let's not forget that it was also an age for the rise of the pants suit for women.

 

Before men started putting on the crotch-covering leggings we now call trousers, everybody wore skirts .And why not? Skirts are far simpler to construct and facilitate more cooling air flow to the nether regions, which would’ve been an absolute godsend in the pre-air conditioning era. But then, thanks to the rise of horseback infantries, trousers became the below-the-belt manly uniform of the masculine masses.

Women, meanwhile, continued wearing skirts, and not just simple wrap-around numbers. We’re talking heavy, multi-layered, floor-length ensembles often further supported and puffed out with the assistance of cage crinoline and petticoats or other clunky foundation garments, depending on the era.

Trousers for ladies were trickled into high fashion in 1911 by French designer Paul Poiret, who had earlier done women a solid by introducing corset-free styles. His harem pant, as seen on Downton Abbey, made the cover of Vogue in 1913.Oh! And speaking of Vogue, billowy slacks were becoming more commonplace in its pages by the 1930s, as well as on the pages of celebrity trades that showcased some Hollywood A-listers including Marlene Dietrich and K. Hepburn wearing them on and off screen. For the average well-heeled woman, however, pants couldn’t simply be tossed on effortlessly.

During WWII, American women wore pants in the workplace, dresses and skirts were still the go-to for properly going out in public, and Dior’s post-War New Look, swung the pendulum even farther away from the pant for a period. Really, as Worn Through underscores, it wasn’t until the sexual revolution and second-wave feminism in the late 1960s and 1970s that women started wearing trousers en masse and whenever they wished — for the most part. It wasn’t until 1993, for instance, that Sen. Barbara Mikulski and Carol Moseley-Braun became the first woman senators to rock pantsuits on Senate floor, forcing the Senate to lift its ban on lady trousers. Hence, while women’s adoption of pants wasn’t fueled by militarism as it was with men, the choice to eschew a skirt was no less an epic struggle.