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How to dress like a gentleman- A guide on the histrory of trousers worn by the true gentleman.
TROUSERS
HISTORY
The ancient Persians, the Chinese and the mounted Mongol hordes all waged war in calf-length
trousers. Perhaps in consequence of fighting the Persians for so long , the Greeks regarded any
form of legged garment as barbaric. It was left to the tribes of northern Europe to introduce trousers
to the Romans, who adopted them as cold weather wear for their troops while still frowning upon their
use in the capital itself.
Charlemagne, the 9th-century European emperor, wore a form of trouser cross-gartered to the
knees and this style endured until the Crusaders brought him new ideas and fabrics, silks and
velvets, and trousers were replaced by tight hose.
Gentlemen showed their legs for the following 600 years, usually sprouting from breeches which over
the centuries fluctuated to fashionable extremes until brought short by the social upheaval that was
the French Revolution. The revolutionaries were known as sans-culottes (implying, roughly, ’
breechless bums’) and the notion of a simpler , classless way of dressing took hold throughout
Europe. Tight-fitting pantaloons, named after a character in Italian comedy, were worn from the
1790s and these were shortly followed by the first narrow trousers, inspired by a looser garment worn
by sailors.
Americans, eager to assert sartorial as well as political independence, were quickest to abandon the
breeches of their colonial past and to this day they refer to trousers as pants, shortened from
pantaloon. Pantaloons were almost indistinguishable from trousers when they finally faded out in the
course of the 19th century, leaving us with two words for one garment.
As with any radical change in dress, trousers were deemed for some time to be a cause of
dissipation. ‘Fast talk and slang came in with trousers,’ Edward Bulwer-Lytton maintained.
HISTORY
The ancient Persians, the Chinese and the mounted Mongol hordes all waged war in calf-length
trousers. Perhaps in consequence of fighting the Persians for so long , the Greeks regarded any
form of legged garment as barbaric. It was left to the tribes of northern Europe to introduce trousers
to the Romans, who adopted them as cold weather wear for their troops while still frowning upon their
use in the capital itself.
Charlemagne, the 9th-century European emperor, wore a form of trouser cross-gartered to the
knees and this style endured until the Crusaders brought him new ideas and fabrics, silks and
velvets, and trousers were replaced by tight hose.
Gentlemen showed their legs for the following 600 years, usually sprouting from breeches which over
the centuries fluctuated to fashionable extremes until brought short by the social upheaval that was
the French Revolution. The revolutionaries were known as sans-culottes (implying, roughly, ’
breechless bums’) and the notion of a simpler , classless way of dressing took hold throughout
Europe. Tight-fitting pantaloons, named after a character in Italian comedy, were worn from the
1790s and these were shortly followed by the first narrow trousers, inspired by a looser garment worn
by sailors.
Americans, eager to assert sartorial as well as political independence, were quickest to abandon the
breeches of their colonial past and to this day they refer to trousers as pants, shortened from
pantaloon. Pantaloons were almost indistinguishable from trousers when they finally faded out in the
course of the 19th century, leaving us with two words for one garment.
As with any radical change in dress, trousers were deemed for some time to be a cause of
dissipation. ‘Fast talk and slang came in with trousers,’ Edward Bulwer-Lytton maintained.
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