18th June: Trouser Day

Trouser Day marks the occasion when British Infantry wore trousers for the first time. Here are a few fascinating facts about the history of trousers.

1. Trousers were invented in China. The oldest known trousers were found at the Yanghai cemetery in Turpan, Xinjiang, western China, dated to the period between the 13th and the 10th century BC. These trousers were made of wool and were probably made for horseback riding.
2. The word trousers was first recorded in English in 1625. Before that words like ‘trouse’, ‘trews’ or ‘strossers’ were used. Shakespeare only mentions trousers once, in Henry V, where he refers to them as ‘strait strossers’.
3. The wearing of trousers (as opposed to breeches, which reached to just below the knee) was at first standard attire for working people. Hence trousers became a symbol of the French Revolution as that is what most of the mob storming the Bastille were wearing. Trousers reaching to the ankles spread to all classes in France and male fashion innovators like Beau Brummell started wearing them.
4. As with most new fashions, the establishment didn't like them at first and tried its best to stop the fad. In the early 19th century, students at Cambridge were deemed to be absent if they showed up for lectures wearing trousers, and in Sheffield clergy were banned from wearing them, too. Even when the Duke of Wellington himself, a hero of the realm, turned up to his club wearing ankle length trousers, he was turned away.
5. Trousers had not been popular in ancient Rome, either. In 397 ad the wearing of trousers in Rome was a crime punishable by exile.
6. It took even longer for it to become acceptable for women to wear trousers. There is a Bible verse which forbids women from wearing "that which pertains to men" even though it doesn't specifically mention trousers. In 1919, a woman called Luisa Capetillo was sent to prison in Puerto Rico for wearing trousers in public. The charges were dropped but it wasn't until the second world war when women did men's work that trousers became acceptable mainstream wear for women. It was only in 2013 that a Paris bylaw forbidding women from wearing trousers unless they were holding the handlebars of a Bicycle or the reins of a Horse was officially revoked.
7. Trousers cause twice as many accidents as chainsaws in Britain; but The Great Texas Trouser Massacre somehow doesn't have quite the same ring to it.
8. Ever wondered how on earth trousers slung so low that one's underpants are showing got to be a fashion? Wonder no more. It started in US prisons where prisoners do not get issued with new trousers during their sentence but have to wear the ones they arrived with. The diet and exercise regime of prison often meant prisoners would lose weight, and since belts and braces are banned in case they are used as weapons or for suicide, prisoners end up with saggy trousers. Disaffected youths in the US started copying that look.
9. Ever wondered why trousers are referred to as "a pair of trousers"? This was because trousers evolved from knee-length socks, which in medieval Europe got longer and longer and eventually joined at the crotch, becoming a single garment but were still referred to in the plural.
10. The second world war had some influence on the styles of trousers. There was a shortage of fabric, so turn ups weren't allowed, and tailors could be prosecuted for making trousers too long, allowing a man's wife to turn them up when he got them home. Metal, leather and elastic were in short supply, too, so elasticated waists and belts were illegal, too. Boys under twelve weren't allowed to wear long trousers after 1942.