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Pastimes : Don't Ask Rambi -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Rambi who wrote (58472)	2/8/2001 7:03:04 PM
From: Kid Rock	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 71178

found in a google search - page not available but copied from cache A History of Trousers (Or-- WWW.WWW-- Why We Wear What We Wear) "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." George Santayana (philosopher, poet, 1863-1952) Notice that most words describing pants are in the plural for the two legs which they cover. About 1760 most men begin wearing breeches, a tight garment worn from the waist to the knee with stockings covering the rest of the leg. "Britches" was an informal word for breeches. Prior to this men were wearing various form of skirts and dresses (but that's another story). Pantaloons (where we get the word pants) were made popular in 1812 by George Bryan "Beau" Brummell who wore his with a foot strap (like modern ski pants) to keep the pants tight and avoid creases. Brummell, buddy to the future King George IV, developed a dress code that anyone, not just royalty, could follow. He dispensed fashion tips and stressed cleanliness (a novel idea for the time). Pantaloon first appeared as an English word in the 1600's and came from the Italian comedy character Pantaleone who wore the first loose "clown pants". Eventually the characters name came to mean the pants he wore. In England pants still refers only to underwear. The French revolution of 1789 was also a revolt against breeches as being too upper class. The country peasant trouser look was in. Trousers probably derived from the words trouses-- drawers, trousses--trunk hose, and/or trousse--to cover, truss. They were looser than the tight pantaloon are were favored for daytime wear while pantaloons were more evening attire. Trousers were worn over breeches when horseback riding to keep the more formal clothes clean. Sailors had been wearing the looser fit work trousers since the 1580s since they allowed them to roll up the legs for wading ashore or climbing rigging. In 1846 Sir Harry Lumsden, commanding an English troop in Punjab, India traded in his bright white trousers for pajama bottoms to find relief from the heat. To disguise them he colored them to blend with the local terrain using mazari, a native plant. Thus the birth of Khaki, the Hindu word for "dust". As a by product, Lumsden discovered that the new Khaki pants were more suitable in battle than the white pants, and red tunic. Blending in was good. Khaki is a color, but is now synonymous with a military twill pant. Khaki went from India to the Kaffir War in South Africa in 1851, and then after the Sudan Wars and Afghan Campaign of 1878 it was adopted in 1884 as the official uniform. The same year Khaki-color dye was patented. It soon was adopted by other armies including America for the Spanish-American War in 1898. Although not all armies were as willing to give up their brightly colored uniforms: "Les pantaloons rouge, ils sont la France!" --Members of the French Army Chinos were military issue pants which were originally of Chinese made fabric or made in China. The British Khakis found their way into China where they were duplicated and sold to American soldiers in the Philippines for uniforms. Chinos don't have to be twill, but are often a firm weave of cotton. Chinos can be Khaki color. The military style had no pleats and was tapered at the leg bottom to conserve fabric. When soldiers returned to civilian life from WWII they continued to wear their military chinos especially to college. Reportedly, Bill's Khakis is one of the best pants on the market. And L. L. Bean stocks jeans to chinos. Can we talk about ladies bloomers? They were pants invented by Elizabeth Smith Miller and consisted of a short skirt with baggy trousers gathered at the ankles. This masculine article of clothing appealed to Amelia Jenks Bloomer of Homer, New York who adopted and popularized the style as kind of rebellion about 1850. They were embraced by the first women's liberation troops and sports-minded ladies who rode the bicycle craze of the 1890's. In the 1860's knee pants were popular for sports such as hunting and golf. They took the form of loose breeches such as "plus fours" which came four inches below the knee. We still see this style on the golf course. They continued popularity through the 1920s and 30s when they became known as Knickerbockers after a common last name of the New York Dutch who wore traditional knee pants. Short pants were also an English military invention to keep cool defending the far flung Empire. Bermuda shorts were worn down to the knee and are named after the British island. Oscar Wilde tried to reintroduce breeches in 1890, but the gentlemen of the day were rational in their rejection. The state of mind held steady until 1925 when a hot summer was the excuse for Oxford Bags. The measurement of these loose pants at the leg bottom reached 40 inches!! Invented and embraced by English Oxford University students, Bags were inspired by the loose trousers that oarsmen slipped on over their shorts. The extreme fashion didn't last long, but reappeared as the pants to wear with the Zoot Suit in 1938. Although not as extreme, another attempt at wide bottoms came when Pierre Cardin popularized bell bottoms in the 60's as a reaction to the new narrow shoulder suits. Jeans were also effected and affected during that time. Another word which is interchangeable with pants and trousers is slacks, which was coined by the Haggar Corporation in the 1940s as a promotion for their casual pants, to be worn during your "slack" time between work and sports. We can't talk about pants without a brief history of blue jeans. Jeans 501 (I mean 101): Denim comes from "serge de Nimes" which was a canvas cloth first produced in Nimes, France. It's possible that the sails for Christopher Columbus' ships were made of serge de Nimes. Jeans is derived from Genoese sailors called "genes" who first wore pants of canvas. Dungarees is a Hindu word for course cloth worn by dock workers in Dhunga, India. But our story really begins in 1853 when Levi Strauss (born Loeb Strauss in Bavaria in 1829) moved to San Francisco to sell canvas cloth for tents and wagon covers to gold miners. He found a more urgent need for pants that would stand up (no pun) to the rigors of mining, so he started making pants out of the brown canvas fabric. In 1860 indigo dye was first used for denim. Indigo is one of the oldest dyes and made from fermented leaves of Indigofera plants which are native to China and India. A synthetic Indigo was introduced in 1897. Jacob Davis invented metal rivets in 1873 and joined with Strauss to patent their use at stress points on jeans. The crotch rivet at the base of the fly was finally removed in 1941 after many years of complaints about heat conductivity. Company president Walter Haas, Sr. was on a camping trip, ventured too close to the campfire and got the message. The rear pocket rivets which scratched wooden furniture and saddles were covered in 1937 and removed in 1967. In 1873 the stitched back-pocket design was introduced, reported inspired by the wings of an eagle. The "50l" is the lot number assigned to the famous "waist overalls" in 1890. In 1922 belt loops were added to Levis and H. D. Lee introduced the first zipper fly for jeans in 1926. The red tab was attached to the right rear pocket of Levis in 1936. James Dean appeared wearing jeans in the 1955 movie "Rebel Without a Cause" and American teenagers joined in the rush to rebellion. Jeans were still going strong in 1968 when Landlubber was one of the first to market Bell Bottoms. In 1987 the "ripped and torn" look was endorsed by manufacturers who sold jeans that were already slashed, and 1992 the baggy look gained popularity, inspired by beltless prison jeans and the look of prisoners who loose weight in the "big house". --Andy Gilchrist, for A Man's Life