FASHION'S GROWTH

Evening Post, Volume CXXIX, Issue 23, 27 January 1940, Page 19

FASHION'S GROWTH

THE CULT OF TROUSERS

LADY CADOGAN'S DILEMMA

The suggestion of an "anti-trouser crusade" among makers of women's clothes in London is a reminder that trousers are really of very recent use even among men in this country, writes "Lucio" in the "Manchester Guardian." Blanche in his "Encyclopaedia of Costume," issued in mid-Victorian days; remarks that "the general fashion ' of trousers in England dates from a peridtt within my own recollection, but on the Continent as well as in Ireland and Scotland they may boast an antiquity only inferior to that of their Oriental prototypes/ The reference to Scotland may surprise some people who forget Macaulay's famous passage on the subject of the adoption at Holyrood in 1621 by an English King of a kilt, a costume which to the people of Lowland Scotland had till recently been the "garb of a thief." As to Ireland, according to Froissart, it was during the'visit of Richard II that the Irish nobles were induced to begin to wear "breeches."

Planche, however, says that trousers divided the w.orld. On the .one .hand, there were Romans, Greeks, and Egyptians who did not wear them; on the other, tribes of the "Scythian or North Asiatic family," who> wearing trousers, overran Europe and c°lpnised the South of Britain, introducing their "close trousers or loose pantaloons." "Everyone" knows that the Duke of Wellington himself was refused admittance to a ball at Almack's when wearing trousers instead pf breeches and stockings, and to, this day for Court ceremonies it is intimated whether trousers should be worn instead of the more ceremonial garb. This has curious results at times, and it is related that for the funeral of Queen Victoria both Lord and Lady Cadogan were by a slip officially instructed, to wear, trousers.