page_title: Wide-leg jeans
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Wide-leg jeans / History
caption_attribution_description: English: Franse Zouaaf
context_page_description: Wide-leg jeans, colloquially called baggy pants, are a style of clothing that were popular from the late 1990s to the mid 2000s. The quintessential brand of "hip-hop"-style wide-leg jeans comes from the Los Angeles-based JNCO, although other youth- and ethnic-oriented clothing companies manufacture them as well.
context_section_description: Historically, the cut of pants has varied by period. From the 1500s until the early 17th century, very loose fitting breeches and hosen were fashionable among the wealthy. Frequently, these galligaskins, trunk hose and Rhinegraves had slits to reveal a contrasting fabric lining, and were paired with short doublet or jerkin. These were replaced with tighter breeches and justacorps frock coats during the 1660s, which remained in fashion until long pantaloons were introduced during the 1788 French Revolution and Georgian Regency era. Baggy pantaloons (named after Pantalone from the Harlequinade) were originally work clothing, and were worn by urban French Sans-Culottes seeking to distinguish themselves from the overdressed aristocratic fops of the Ancien Régime who wore tight knee breeches.
  In the Islamic World, loose fitting harem pants and the shalwar kameez were traditionally worn for modesty. These trousers remain typical everyday menswear in modern Iran, Afghanistan and Kurdistan. Subsequent conflict between the Ottoman, Russian and Holy Roman Empire resulted in the development of the European loose trousers or Sharovary worn as folk costume in Greece, Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland and Ukraine. From the Crimean War until World War I, French Zouaves were also issued baggy red pajama pants inspired by those worn by North African and Turkish soldiers.
  Beginning in the early 20th century, baggy pants began to gain rebellious connotations. During the 1920s, wide Oxford bags were favored by the Hearties of Oxford and Cambridge University because they could be put on over the knickerbockers then worn to play rugby football. In the US during the 1930s and 1940s, Black, Italian and Mexican zoot suiters, Pachuchos and hep cats wore very wide legged high waisted pants to the dancehalls as a protest against wartime rationing, and because it was easy for gang members to conceal weapons beneath a baggy suit. The popularity of baggy pants among teenagers faded in the 1950s, when young members of the greaser subculture favored drainpipe jeans.
caption: French soldier wearing baggy Turkish style pants
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