Trousers

This article is about the clothing item. For the implementation of the TCG Software Stack, see Trusted Computing Group.

"Pants" redirects here. For styles of undergarments sometimes called "pants", see Underpants and Undergarment. For the object in hyperbolic geometry, see pair of pants.

A man wearing trousers

Trousers are an item of clothing worn from the waist to the ankles, covering both legs separately (rather than with cloth stretching across both as in skirts and dresses). The word trousers is used in the UK and Ireland, but some other English-speaking countries such as Canada, South Africa, and the United States often refer to such items of clothing as pants, a shortening of the historic term pantaloons. Australia is known to differentiate between pants and trousers. Shorts are similar to trousers, but with legs that come down only to around the area of the knee, higher or lower than the knee depending on the style of the garment.

In most of the Western world, trousers have been worn since ancient times and throughout the Medieval period, becoming the most common form of lower body clothing for males in the modern period, although shorts are also widely worn, and kilts and other garments may be worn in various regions and cultures. Since the 20th century, trousers have become prevalent for females as well. Shorts are often preferred in hot weather or for some sports, and also often by children. Trousers are worn at the hips or waist, and may be held up by their own fastenings, a belt, or suspenders (braces). Leggings are form-fitting trousers of a clingy material, often knitted cotton and spandex.

Terminology

In the United Kingdom, England, and Ireland most people use trousers or slacks as the general category term, whereas pants usually refers to underwear but is used, interchangeably with trousers, in some northern dialects. In Scotland, trousers are known as trews, which is the historic root of the word 'trousers'. Trousers are known as breeks in Scots. The item of clothing worn under trousers is underpants. In North America pants is the general category term, whereas trousers (sometimes slacks in Australia and the United States) often refer more precisely to tailored garments with a waistband, belt-loops, and a fly-front. For instance, informal elastic-waist knitted garments would be called pants, but not slacks.

North Americans call undergarments underwear, underpants, "long johns" or panties (the last are women's garments specifically) to distinguish them from other pants that are worn on the outside. The term drawers normally refers to undergarments, but in some dialects, may be found as a synonym for "breeches", that is, trousers. In these dialects, the term underdrawers is used for undergarments. In Australia, men's undergarments are called underwear, underpants, undies, under-dacks, dacks or jocks.

Various people in the fashion industry use the words trouser or pant instead of trousers or pants. This is nonstandard usage. The words "trousers" and "pants" are pluralia tantum, nouns that generally only appear in plural form—much like the words "scissors" and "tongs". However, the singular form is used in some compound words, such as trouser-leg, trouser-press and trouser-bottoms.

History

Prehistory

There is some evidence, from figurative art, of trousers being worn in the Upper Paleolithic. An example are the figurines found at the Siberian sites of Mal'ta and Buret'.

Antiquity

Scythian archer. Interior from an Ancient Greek Attic red-figure plate, ca. 520–500 BC, from Vulci. British Museum, London.

Germanic trousers of the 4th century found in the Thorsberg moor, Germany

Trousers first enter recorded history in the 6th century BCE, with the appearance of horse-riding Iranian peoples in Greek ethnography. At this time, not only the Persians, but also allied Eastern and Central Asian peoples such as the Bactrians, Armenians, Tigraxauda Scythians and Xiongnu Hunnu, are known to have worn them. Trousers are believed to have been worn by both sexes among these early users.

The ancient Greeks used the term "ἀναξυρίδες" (anaxyrides) for the trousers worn by Eastern nations and "σαράβαρα" (sarabara) for the loose trousers worn by the Scythians. However, they did not wear trousers since they thought them ridiculous, using the word "θύλακοι" (thulakoi), pl. of "θύλακος" (thulakos), "sack", as a slang term for the loose trousers of Persians and other orientals.

Republican Rome viewed the draped clothing of Greek and Minoan (Cretan) culture as an emblem of civilization and disdained trousers as the mark of barbarians. As the Empire expanded beyond the Mediterranean basin, however, the greater warmth provided by trousers led to their adoption. Two types of trousers eventually saw widespread use in Rome: the Feminalia, which fit snugly and usually fell to knee or mid-calf length, and the Braccae, a loose-fitting trouser that was closed at the ankles. Both garments were adopted originally from the Celts of Europe, although later familiarity with the Persian Near East and the Teutons increased acceptance. Feminalia and Braccae both began use as military garments, spreading to civilian dress later, and were eventually made in a variety of materials including leather, wool, cotton and silk.

Medieval Europe

Trousers of various design were worn throughout the Middles Ages in Europe, especially by males. Loose-fitting trousers were worn in Byzantium under long tunics, and were worn by many of the tribes, such as the Xiongnu Hun that migrated through Europe in the Early Middle Ages, as evidenced by both artistic sources and such relics as the 4th-century costumes recovered from the Thorsberg bog (see illustration). Trousers in this period, generally called brais, varied in length and were often closed at the cuff or even had attached foot coverings, although open-legged pants were also seen.

By the 8th century there is evidence of the wearing in Europe of two layers of trousers, especially among upper-class males. This under layer is today referred to by costume historians as “drawers,” although that usage did not emerge until the late 16th century. Over the drawers were worn trousers of wool or linen, which in the 10th century began to be referred to as breeches in many places. Tightness of fit and length of leg varied by period, class, and geography. (Open legged trousers can be seen on the Norman soldiers of the Bayeux Tapestry.)

Although Charlemagne (742–814) is recorded to have habitually worn his trousers, donning the Byzantine tunic only for ceremonial occasions, the influence of the Roman past and the example of Byzantium led to the increasing use of long tunics by men, hiding most of the trousers from view and eventually rendering them an undergarment for many. As undergarments, these trousers became briefer or longer as the length of the various medieval outer-garments changed and were met by, and usually attached to, another garment variously called hose or stockings.

In the 14th century it became common among the men of the noble and knightly classes to connect the hose directly to their pourpoints (the padded under jacket worn with armored breastplates that would later evolve into the doublet) rather than to their drawers. In the 15th century, rising hemlines led to ever briefer drawers until they were dispensed with altogether by the most fashionable elites who joined their skin-tight hose back into trousers. These trousers, which we would today call tights but which were still called hose or sometimes joined hose at the time, emerged late in the 15th Century and were conspicuous by their open crotch which was covered by an independently fastening front panel, the codpiece. The exposure of the hose to the waist was consistent with 15th-century trends, which also brought pourpoint/doublet and the shirt, previous undergarments, into view, but the most revealing of these fashions were only ever adopted at court and not by the general population.

Men's clothes in Hungary in the 15th century consisted of a shirt and trousers as underwear, and a dolman worn over them, as well as a short fur-lined or sheepskin coat. Hungarians generally wore simple trousers, only their colour being unusual; the dolman covered the greater part of the trousers.

Medieval North Korea

The Korean word for trousers baji (originally paji) first appears in recorded history around the turn of the 15th century, but pants may have been in use by Korean society for some time. From at least this time pants were worn by both sexes in Korea. Men wore trousers both outer garments or beneath skirts while it was unusual for adult women to wear their pants (termed sokgot) without a covering skirt. As in Europe, a wide variety of styles came to define regions and time periods and age and gender groups, from the unlined gouei to the padded sombaji.

Modern Europe

Around the turn of the 16th century it became conventional to separate hose into two pieces, one from the waist to the crotch which fastened around the top of the legs, called trunk hose, and the other running beneath it to the foot. The trunk hose soon reached down the thigh to fasten below the knee and were now usually called "breeches" to distinguish them from the lower-leg coverings still called hose or, sometimes stockings. By the end of the 16th century, the codpiece had also been incorporated into breeches which featured a fly or fall front opening.

In order to modernize, Tsar Peter the Great issued a decree in 1701 commanding every Russian, other than clergy and peasant farmers, to wear trousers.

During the French Revolution, the male citizens of France adopted a working-class costume including ankle-length trousers, or pantaloons (from a Commedia dell'Arte character named Pantalone) in place of the aristocratic knee-breeches. The new garment of the revolutionaries differed from that of the ancien regime upper classes in three ways: it was loose where the style for breeches had most recently been form-fitting, it was ankle length where breeches had generally been knee-length for more than two centuries, and they were open at the bottom while breeches were fastened. This style was introduced to England in the early 19th century, possibly by Beau Brummell, and by mid-century had supplanted breeches as fashionable street wear. At this point, even knee-length pants adopted the open bottoms of trousers (see shorts) and were worn by young boys, for sports, and in tropical climates. Breeches proper survived into the 20th century as court dress, and also in baggy mid-calf (or three-quarter length) versions known as plus-fours or knickers worn for active sports and by young school-boys. Types of breeches are still worn today by baseball and American football players.

Sailors may have played a role in the worldwide dissemination of trousers as a fashion. In the 17th and 18th centuries, sailors wore baggy trousers known as galligaskins. Sailors also pioneered the wearing of jeans, trousers made of denim. These became more popular in the late 19th century in the American West because of their ruggedness and durability.

Women's trousers

Main article: Women wearing pants

Amazon wearing trousers and carrying a shield with an attached patterned cloth and a quiver. Ancient Greek Attic white-ground alabastron, ca. 470 BC, British Museum, London

Although women began wearing men's trousers for outdoor work a hundred years earlier in Western countries, it was taboo for women to wear trousers. It was only in the 1960s that trousers became acceptable wear for Western women.

Starting around the mid-19th century, Wigan pit brow girls scandalized Victorian society by wearing trousers for their work at the local coal mines. They wore skirts over their trousers and rolled them up to their waists to keep them out of the way. Although pit brow lasses worked above ground at the pit-head, their task of sorting and shovelling coal involved hard manual labour, so wearing the usual long skirts of the time would have greatly hindered their movements.

Women working the ranches of the 19th-century American West also wore trousers for riding. In the early 20th century aviatrices and other working women often wore trousers. Frequent photographs from the 1930s of actresses Marlene Dietrich and Katharine Hepburn in trousers helped make trousers acceptable for women. During World War II, women working in factories and doing other forms of "men's work" on war service wore trousers when the work demanded it. In the post-war era, trousers became acceptable casual wear for gardening, the beach, and other leisurely pursuits.

In Britain during the Second World War, because of the rationing of clothing, many women took to wearing their husbands' civilian clothes, including their trousers, to work while their husbands were away from home serving in the armed forces. This was partly because they were seen as practical garments of workwear and partly to allow women to keep their clothing allowance for other uses. As this practice of wearing trousers became more widespread and as the men's clothing wore out, replacements were needed. By the summer of 1944, it was reported that sales of women's trousers were five times more than they had been in the previous year.

In the 1960s, André Courrèges introduced long trousers for women as a fashion item, leading to the era of the pantsuit and designer jeans and the gradual eroding of social prohibitions against girls and women wearing trousers in schools, the workplace and in fine restaurants.

Parts of trousers

Parts of trousers

Pleats

Pleats just below the waistband on the front typify many styles of formal and casual trousers, including suit trousers and khakis. There may be one, two, three, or no pleats, which may face either direction. When the pleats open towards the pockets they are called reverse pleats (typical of most trousers today) and when they open toward the fly they are known as forward pleats.

Cuffs

Trouser-makers can finish the legs by hemming the bottom to prevent fraying. Trousers with turn-ups (cuffs in American English), after hemming, are rolled outward and sometimes pressed or stitched into place. The main reason for the turn-ups is to add weight to the bottom of the leg, to help the drape of the trousers.

Fly

Main article: Fly (clothing)

A fly is a covering over an opening join concealing the mechanism, such as a zipper, velcro or buttons, used to join the opening. In trousers, this is most commonly an opening covering the groin, which makes the pants easier to put on or take off. The opening also allows men to urinate without lowering their pants.

Trousers have varied historically in whether or not they have a fly. Originally, hose did not cover the area between the legs. This was instead covered by a doublet or by a codpiece. When breeches were worn, during the Regency period for example, they were fall-fronted (or broad fall). Later, after trousers (pantaloons) were invented, the fly-front (split fall) emerged. The panelled front returned as a sporting option, such as in riding breeches, but is now hardly ever used, a fly being by far the most common fastening. Most flies now use a zipper, though button-fly pants such as Levi's 501 jeans continue to be available.

Trouser support

At present, most trousers are held up through the assistance of a belt which is passed through the belt loops on the waistband of the trousers. However, this was traditionally a style acceptable only for casual trousers and work trousers; suit trousers and formal trousers were suspended by the use of braces (suspenders in American English) attached to buttons located on the interior or exterior of the waistband. Today, this remains the preferred method of trouser support amongst adherents of classical British tailoring. Many men claim this method is more effective and more comfortable because it requires no cinching of the waist or periodic adjustment.

Society

In modern Western society, males customarily wear trousers and not skirts or dresses. There are exceptions, however, such as the ceremonial Scottish kilt and Albanian fustanella, as well as robes or robe-like clothing like the cassocks of clergy and the academic robes, both rarely worn today in daily use. (See also Men's skirts.)

Convertible Ventilated Trousers shown with one leg cover removed

Based on Deuteronomy 22:5 in the Bible ("The woman shall not wear that which pertaineth unto a man"), some groups, including the Amish, Hutterites, some Mennonites, some Baptists, a few Church of Christ groups, and most Orthodox Jews, believe that women should not wear trousers, but only skirts and dresses. These groups do permit women to wear underpants as long as they are hidden.

Among certain groups, low-rise, baggy trousers exposing underwear became fashionable; for example, among skaters and in 1990s hip hop fashion. This fashion is called sagging or, alternatively, "busting slack."

Cut-offs are homemade shorts made by cutting the legs off trousers, usually after holes have been worn in fabric around the knees. This extends the useful life of the trousers. The remaining leg fabric may be hemmed or left to fray after being cut.

Pants Day, an internet holiday celebrating the role of pants in the formation of current society, has been proposed for the last Friday of September (opposite No Pants Day on the first Friday of May).

Law

In May 2004 in Louisiana, African American Democrat and state legislator Derrick Shepherd proposed a bill that would make it a crime to appear in public wearing trousers below the waist and thereby exposing one's skin or "intimate clothing". The Louisiana bill did not pass.

In February 2005, Virginia legislators tried to pass a similar law that would have made punishable by a $50 fine "any person who, while in a public place, intentionally wears and displays his below-waist undergarments, intended to cover a person's intimate parts, in a lewd or indecent manner". (It is not clear whether, with the same coverage by the trousers, exposing underwear was considered worse than exposing bare skin, or whether the latter was already covered by another law.) The law passed in the Virginia House of Delegates. However, various criticisms to it arose. For example, newspaper columnists and radio talk show hosts consistently said that since most people that would be penalized under the law would be young African-American men, the law would thus be a form of discrimination against men. Virginia's state senators voted against passing the law.

See also

• Capri pants
• Churidar
• No Pants Day
• Oxford bags
• Pantalettes
• Thai fisherman pants
• Trouser clips
• Breeches
• Clothing sizes

External links

• (video) Etymology of 'Pants', from Mysteries of Vernacular