A Brief History of Trousers (2024)

FAQs

A Brief History of Trousers? ›

The oldest known trousers, dating to the period between the thirteenth and the tenth centuries BC, were found at the Yanghai cemetery in Turpan, Xinjiang (Tocharia), in present-day western China. Made of wool, the trousers had straight legs and wide crotches and were likely made for horseback riding.

In attempting to define trousers, historians often explain that if any portion of a garment passed between the legs, it was an ancestor of this garment. Thus defined, trousers can be traced to ancient times and were especially common among equestrian peoples such as the Scythians and Mongols.

Most early African Christians readily accepted the injunction in Deut 22:5 that women should not put on what pertains to men and vice versa as applying to all ages and cultures. Hence, the same text is usually quoted against women who wear trousers, not even to the church but as part of their casual dressing.

"garment for men, covering the lower body and each leg separately," 1610s, earlier trouzes (1580s), extended from trouse (1570s), with plural ending typical of things in pairs, from Gaelic or Middle Irish triubhas "close-fitting shorts," of uncertain origin.

The first woman in history to wear trousers was Elizabeth Smith Miller, known as Libby, in 1851. The female outfit with trousers became famous thanks to the American activist Amelia Bloomers who published it in her magazine "The Lily" in 1855.

The first appearance of trousers in recorded history is among nomadic steppe-people in Western Europe. Steppe people were a group of nomads of various different ethnic groups that lived in the Eurasian grasslands. Archaeological evidence suggests that men and women alike wore trousers in that cultural context.

Initially, trousers were a military garment. They came in the form of snug shorts or loose fitting trousers that closed at the ankles. In the late 14th century, they developed into tight trousers with attached foot coverings. This garment had the appearance of hose and was worn by knights underneath plate armour.

The trousers were seen as a symbol of foreign influence, a stark reminder of the empire's vulnerabilities and the encroaching 'barbarian' cultures. By banning them, Honorius aimed to reinforce a distinct Roman identity and draw a clear line between the empire and its external adversaries.

Made of wool, the trousers had straight legs and wide crotches and were likely made for horseback riding. In most of Europe, trousers have been worn since ancient times and throughout the Medieval period, becoming the most common form of lower-body clothing for adult males in the modern world.

Deuteronomy 22:5 states: "A woman is not to wear male clothing, and a man is not to put on a woman's garment, for everyone who does these things is detestable to the LORD your God.” In KJV Exodus 24: 43, “trousers” are a command from God to be made from the waist to the thighs for the priest to cover nakedness.

Why don't Americans say trousers? ›

Why do Americans say pants instead of trousers? Because pants is short for “pantaloons”. For us, or at least in my part of the US, “trousers” means “dress pants”. Not just any old pants.

When trousers of a similar style became popular during the Restoration in England, they became known as pantaloons, Pantaloon being an Anglicization of Pantalone. Fashions changed over the years, but pantaloons continued to be the word used to refer to various types of trousers.

Differences Between Trouser and Pant

A Trouser is usually a piece of clothing worn as a lower garment to cover the lower part of the body namely the waist, hips, and legs. A pant is also a piece of small clothing that is worn as an undergarment to cover the masculine organs of a person.

He wore a tunic (chitōn), which for men normally finished slightly below the knees, not at the ankles. Among men, only the very rich wore long tunics.

The 3,000-year-old wool trousers belonged to a man buried between 1000 and 1200 BCE in Western China. To make them, ancient weavers combined four different techniques to create a garment specially engineered for fighting on horseback, with flexibility in some places and sturdiness in others.”

The Great Male Renunciation (French: Grande Renonciation masculine) is the historical phenomenon at the end of the 18th century in which wealthy Western men stopped using bright colours, elaborate shapes and variety in their dress, which were left to women's clothing.

Trousers apparently comes from Gaelic, and originally referred to tight short pants. Pants is a shortening of pantaloons, attested from around 1840. The uses of the words seem to have come about when everyone stopped calling them breeches (which you might still here in Appalachia, for example).

Originally: a garment resembling either breeches with stockings attached or close-fitting trousers… In singular. truss1592–1631. plural. Close-fitting breeches or drawers, covering the buttocks and tops of the thighs: = trouse, n.²