A brief history of when (and why) women started wearing pants
By: Sneha Konda
Tags: Style, Feminism, Culture, History, Women

As a person who stands a very little over 5 feet tall, finding the right fit of pants is as challenging as it gets. Although brands are now looking into size inclusivity, it’s still hard to find something that will fit me. In that, my search often gets me plenty of stares when I lurk at the kids’ section looking for it.

While I continued to wishlist pair after pair that cost as much as someone’s monthly wage, I was led to a story that left me hot-faced, for lack of expletives: Russian company tells women workers to stop wearing trousers.Worse, the aluminum firm Tatprof were offering an extra $1.50 a day for women who wore a skirt or dress, modest makeup, had their hair tied while at work, and sent a selfie to their bosses, proving the same. This, the company said, would allow women to feel more feminine, and would brighten up the office for the — mainly male — staff.

As archaic as this sounds, this story, although happening in 2019, is not new to the movement. Pants weren’t deemed appropriate clothing for women until very late into the 20th century, and we fought to be able to pull on a pair. Quite literally.

Hindu woman, in Sind, India, in salwar-style pajamas. Photo taken by Michie and Company in c. 1870, from the Archaeological Survey of India Collections

Pants in ancient history:

👖 In Ancient China, as early as the first millennium BCE, historians believe that it was common for working-class men and women to wear trousers or leggings.

👖 In Ancient Greece, painted pottery from the late 400 B.C. depicted warrior women wearing pants too.

👖 A series of photographs commissioned by the Government of India in the 19th century, to gather information about clothes, customs, trade and religions of the different racial groups on the sub-continent showcased a number of Muslim, Sikh and Hindu women wearing salwar-style “pajama” pants, that was eventually adopted by Europeans during British East India Company rule in India.

👖 According to Smithsonian Mag, in mid 1800s in America, women often wore 15 pound skirts in the name of modesty. “Women complained of overheating and impaired breathing, sweeping along filthy streets and tripping over stairs, crushed organs from whalebone stays and laced corsets, and getting caught in factory machinery,” writes historian Annemarie Strassel. By 1850, Amelia Bloomer, a women’s rights activist, and the first woman to own, operate and edit a newspaper for women, popularized the “bloomer” pant — loose trousers gathered at the ankles, like women’s “harem” trousers worn in the Middle East and Central Asia.

Audrey Hepburn in her signature cropped pants in her 1956 film Funny Face. (Photo: Getty Images)

1900s, here we come:

👖 With women taking to industrial work during World War I and II, it became a necessity to wear pants and overalls.

👖In 1911, the Paris couturier Paul Poiret introduced harem pants as part of his efforts to reinvent and ‘liberate’ Western female fashion. His contemporary, Coco Chanel, who often dressed in her boyfriend’s suits herself, began designing pants for women to wear during horseback riding.

👖 Like you needed any more reason to love these women, Hollywood icons Katharine Hepburn and Marlene Dietrich rebelliously stepped out to their movie premieres in full pantsuits, and raised quite a few eyebrows. “I put on pants 50 years ago and declared a sort of middle road,” Katharine Hepburn, who wore her brother’s clothes as a child, had said in a 1981 interview.

To this day, Audrey Hepburn’s chic pants from her 1956 film, Funny Face is still trending, with everyone trying to “attempt” her look. Because, how hard can wearing black everything possibly be? Turns out, pretty hard.

A model wearing a pinstriped trouser suit by Yves Saint Laurent. (Photo: Reg Lancaster/Getty Images)

Onwards and upwards!

👖 Despite the “second wave of feminism” in the 60s, women, encouraged by developments like the availability of the contraceptive pill, it was still controversial for women to wear trousers in public, according to a piece on Business Insider.

Enter: Yves St Laurent.

The couturier introduced the

Le Smoking, the first tuxedo for women. But it still sparked outrage. “Nan Kempner was famously turned away from Le Côte Basque in New York while wearing her YSL tuxedo suit. Yet in the defiant style befitting of this androgynous, no-nonsense look, she removed the bottom half and waltzed into the restaurant wearing the jacket as a thigh-skimming mini dress instead. The manager later said that for formal dining attire trousers were as unsuitable as a bathing suit,” writes Estella Shardlow in the piece.

👖 The hippy revolution of the 70s brought a new dimension. For the first time, women wore everything from bedazzled and studded to bootcut jeans in public.

A preview of the “Miss Levi” spring collection. (Photo by Mike Lawn/Getty Images)

Since then, we’ve had some pretty significant pant moments in history. A recent low was the controversial Op-Ed by one New York Times opinion writer about how “yoga pants are bad for women.” But the highs should definitely include, all the times Queen Elizabeth has worn trousers (which prompted an entire article by Hello! Magazine) and Hilary Clinton’s revolutionary spectrum of vivid pant suits.

Pants are power, alright!