Who invented woman pants

In , she traveled to Constantinople with her British ambassador husband, and found herself enamoured with the Turkish style of dress. As one of the first Europeans to document daily life in the Ottoman Empire, during her trip, she observed that women appeared to be freer than Western women as a whole.

They could walk unaccompanied at night, obtain a divorce, and even wear trousers in the streets. They more closely resembled the modern trouser long before European men had adopted anything similar they were still stuck in their short breeches and calf-enhancing hosiery until the late 18th century.

Lady Mary returned from her trip with trunks of clothing worn by the Muslim women she encountered, sharing them with members of her social circle, even posing for public portraits modelling the garments. She wrote about her experiences and observations, creating intrigue amongst the fashionable elite. Her letters and firsthand accounts invoked honest conversations about freedom of dress, property rights, and other social, economic, legal, and marital freedoms that women were denied in Europe.

So in a surprising historical twist, it was fact Muslim women who we can thank for greatly influencing many upper-class educated western women in matters of style and social reform. In this period, women were openly advocating for their rights to wear trousers. After all, trousers permitted a woman to move around more easily and protected her legs from the cold.

Amelia Jenks Bloomer, the first woman to own, operate and edit a newspaper for women, is a notable example. For Christian particularly, skirts and dresses were the only appropriate lower garments for women and anything else fell into the dominion of men. Additionally, the adoption of Turkish culture was viewed by many to be heathen and un-Christian. Bloomer-wearing women were thus depicted as impious, morally-depraved infertile heathens! The criticism, harassment and humiliation endured by women in bloomers eventually proved too much.

The first modern Western woman to wear pants in public was likely Fanny Wright in the early s. However, many working and fighting women throughout history likely wore some version of pants making it difficult to discern the first woman to ever wear them. Other names for pants throughout history include slacks , trousers, pantaloons, breeches, and knickerbockers. In Ancient China as early as the first millennium BCE, historians believe working-class men and women commonly wore trousers or leggings.

In Ancient Greek culture , you can see warrior women depicted wearing pants on painted pottery in the late s BC. Early nomads and coastal peoples near Ancient Greece, such as the Scythians, commonly wore pants. The oldest pair of preserved trousers ever discovered were dated from about to BC and were thought to have been worn by both male and female horse riders.

In the s women like Hannah Snell donned pants and took on secret identities so they could fight alongside men in battles. Much later, as many as to women wore pants and posed as men to serve in the American Civil War.

Pantaloons, as they were called at the time, were made popular in the modern Western world by another suffragette, Amelia Jenks Bloomer in the mid to late s. Bloomer published a bi-weekly newspaper called The Lily. It contained Bloomer's views on temperance and women's issues. In addition to temperance and women's equality, The Lily promoted the concept of dress reform. Bloomer advocated a style of dress that would be less restrictive for women than the traditional style of her time: corsets, petticoats and floor length skirts.

Elizabeth Smith Miller is often credited as the first modern woman to wear pants. Miller was a suffragette. Her goal in the s was to help women in the United States win the right to vote. She also aided slaves seeking freedom - her home was a stop on the Underground Railroad. Miller claims to have created her Turkish-style pants one day in while working in the garden.

They were long baggy pants that narrowed at the ankle and were worn under skirts. These early pants were designed to give women more freedom of movement while still preserving the decency expected of Victorian dress. The forerunner of her legendary yachting pants was born; wide trousers for all leisure activities, which also displayed a certain elegance.

Chanel succeeded in what many designers have failed before: To liberate the broad masses of women from strict patriarchal fashion rules.

She declared war on the corset as well as on volants, lace and frills. The soft and elastic material was ideal for her comfortable, flowing patterns, and it was available after the war at a favourable price. Thus, Chanel did not only revolutionise the fashion industry but also broke with persisting gender conventions. Emancipation through fashion was her motto.

Yves Saint Laurent wrote fashion history when designing his » Le Smoking «. Catherine Deneuve was his first customer in The latter chose a white version of the pantsuit for her wedding with rock star Mick Jagger. What is more, Le Smoking also revolutionised modern work clothing. Its far-reaching influence on gender images and break with patriarchal fashion orders was also reflected by fashion photography.

He brought new glamour to the outdated Parisian fashion house, Chanel, by reinterpreting old Chanel classics like a postmodern pastiche in a chic-sexy way. Moreover, he modernised the classical Chanel costume by creating motorbike clothes, including a stylish helmet. Chanel was the first Haute Couture house worldwide, which consciously incorporated street wear elements into its high fashion. Chanel gave young women a modern, unconventional trousers look, which corresponded to the zeitgeist and modern-day struggle for gender equality.

Lagerfeld dressed his muses like Claudia Schiffer, Kate Moss or Kristen Stewart in masculine-sexy outfits, which popularised a contemporary gender mix. In , Kate Moss appeared on the catwalk in a super-sexy brown tweed pantsuit, a bold reinterpretation of the classical Chanel tweed costume. Lagerfeld even made casual trousers high fashion material. In , he presented the first Chanel jogging trousers together with Cara Delevingne on the catwalk.

The fashion history of female trousers is thus also a feminist history of emancipation. Fashion is a cultural practice, which does not only reflect societal circumstances but also generates and reinforces them.