Covid times are leading to healthy arguments between couples. During one such argument, a friend over a drink said "the one who wears the pants in the family" wins.

This simple expression perhaps is meant to describe the "head" of that family and equates the wearing of pants with power and masculinity.

The word “Pant” remained in my mind. I kept pondering over the word wondering who invented pants? After many discussions, reading, the conclusion is that we do not who invented pants. 

Fashion can be fascinating as a kind of living anthropology; what we wear every day is shaped and informed by our culture and is often nowadays as swayed by style as much as practicality. What we wear, when we wear it, and where we wear it can be determined by history, politics, religion, class, gender, or employment as much as taste or the temperature outdoors.

While the words pants and trousers are often used interchangeably, trousers generally refer to tailored garments with a fitted waistline, pockets, and a zipper. The word pants were often used to refer to undergarments, but is also a broader term and can refer to trousers, bloomers, knickerbockers, breeches, slacks, jeans, shorts, and capris. Leggings are often referred to as pants but are more akin to hose.

Pants or Trousers are one of the best examples of how an everyday item can be connected to a whole host of surprising political and moral perspectives. When looking back on three complex millennia of Western and European history, it is rare to be able to track so many developments in culture, politics, and society through one simple piece of clothing.

All people associated with apparel know pants are terrible. They are difficult to manufacture, they wear quickly, and they are not even that comfortable. In fact, these are the reasons why for a huge portion of human history everyone was wearing skirts, kilts, togas, tunics, and other pieces of clothing that were made from a single piece of fabric. They were quicker to put on, easier to use, and quite comfortable. 

If you think about it, it takes quite some effort to make pants. You have to cut the fabric, sew it together and make sure everything fits. It is not that easy with our current methods of mass production, but it was certainly difficult in ancient times.

So why did people switch to pants? And why did humans start wearing pants?

To answer this, it is important to understand two things

firstly, what were the earliest forms of clothing and how they evolved into pants, and secondly, why did a need for pants develop?

At this stage it is also helpful to define what is meant by pants – it is specifically a bifurcated garment for the bottom half of the body covering from waist to the lower leg.

Putting on pants did not happen at the same time in the entire world.

Chinese put their pants on way before Christ was born when they were fighting Nomads from central Asia. Romans decided to start wearing pants when they saw Hannibal’s soldiers wearing them. Meanwhile, Native Americans did not even like pants, but Europeans brought them, and they quickly saw that they do have an advantage in one particular area – riding horses.

In fact, all these examples are related to horses.

The development of pants came alongside horses' domestication and served as an indicator of class and profession. People who rode horses needed to protect their legs and remaining clothed as a simple wrap garment would not remain on the body. Some early variants involved using the same single pieces of cloth and tying them through the legs to create trousers. Horses were initially domesticated in Central Asia sometime between 3500 and 3000 BCE. Horses were a signifier of prestige, and in many cultures horses and the equipment used in riding them or in using them to drive chariots were included in the elites' tombs. In these earliest horse-riding cultures, trousers, as a form of clothing connected to horses, also served as a sign of prestige.

All these men decided to start wearing pants because going to a battle was difficult without a horse. Pants allowed quick mounting and dismounting, which was a huge advantage. They also did not fall off so easily and were quite durable.

Furthermore, they offered a bit of protection from friction burns from the saddle, which is an added benefit – everyone wants to be comfortable going to a battle.

In fact, in ancient Japan pretty much no one wore pants, except samurais, who needed them because, you guessed it, they were riding horses.

Scythian warriors, both male, and female, from Central Eurasia, are depicted wearing tight-fitting trousers in Greek art dating from the 6th century BCE. 

The Greeks wore a wrapped garment, the chiton, and viewed the wearing of trousers as something done by foreigners and females. Some historians believe that the Amazons of Greek myth were at least partially based on the female warriors of the Scythians. In these myths, the trousers come to stand as just one of the ways these warriors buck tradition. 

In the Roman world, the toga was the typical wrap garment for men on formal occasions. Casual wear consisted of a tunic. Earlier military members did not wear trousers, seeing them as effeminate like their Greek predecessors - however, the combination of being defeated by the trouser wearing Teutons continued northern exploration and increased usage of cavalry. The spread of the Romans also helped in spreading trousers throughout much of the area where they conquered. 

After the Romans accepted pants, they became a more standard mode of dress across the Western world. As centuries went on, it became those who did not wear pants who stood out, such as Scottish soldiers who wore kilts into battle up into the 20th century. Even as in previous civilizations, pants had served as a designator of completing a specific task for the upper class of later Western civilizations. They show modernity and how the wearer fits the mold of masculinity. By being prepared to carry out physical activities and not constrained by tight clothing or billowing robes, new fashions showed a change in the cultural mindset as to what was appropriate for these men to accomplish. 

Trousers in Europe had become something of a staple by the Medieval period and were worn in a variety of ways, though often underneath other garments like tunics.

The style of trousers varied depending on region and class. This period saw the birth of European courtly dress, and although for men this often featured the “hose”, these tight-fitting breeches were more like modern-day leggings than trousers. They were designed to show off the toned, well-muscled leg of the male courtiers.

Trousers subsequently began to echo wider political developments and modernization movements across Europe. Peter the Great, Emperor and later Tsar of Russia, decreed in law that all Russian men should wear trousers at the turn of the 18th century; this was part of his wider desire to enhance Russia’s relationship with the European west.

During the French Revolution, the term “sans-culottes” was briefly used to describe the men behind the revolution.

The name, meaning “without breeches”, referred to the ankle-length trousers (called pantaloon) worn by working-class men, especially laborers. These men formed the bulk of the Revolutionary army, and the term became synonymous with their political goals of equality and democracy. Prominent public figures then adopted the pantaloon as a show of patriotism. 

Did you know that it was the reputation of these revolutionaries which meant it was illegal for women to wear pantaloon in Paris, a technicality that remained in French law until February 2013?

Probably the most famous political battle associated with trousers is the long-running campaign to make them gender-neutral in Europe through the 19th and 20th centuries. Women working in coal mines in the mid-Victorian era, known as pit brow lasses, caused a scandal when they opted to wear trousers under a skirt while working; they became a local curiosity, perhaps, partly due to their dress and partly due to the hard nature of their work.

Trousers were especially used by female pilots in the early twentieth century, valued for their flexibility and practicality. 

The Second World War helped to normalize trousers and reduce this increasingly archaic attitude. Not only were trousers helpful for the many women now working in factories, but there was also a movement towards accepting them as a form of female fashion. 

Pants become almost like a symbol of a soldier and later – a man. For a long time, women could not even wear pants in public. Most of them did not even want to – it was considered to be a masculine piece of clothing, too inelegant for a woman. People had to live through the World Wars to see that women are tough and can work in factories due to a shortage of men. This proved that they could wear pants as much as they want to.

The development of pants allowed for a greater range of freedom and movement. While this initially was just for the warrior and lower classes, specifically the males in many societies, over history, the wearing of pants has come to symbolize not only a necessity of movement (as seen when worn by warriors or working peasants) but the choice to be active and to enjoy physical freedoms. Wearing pants showed cultural and societal changes in the ideas of what is masculine and what is feminine and what is expected of all members of society.

Pants-wearing became an everyday affair in Europe during the eighth century, after the fall of the Roman Empire when the continent fell under the rule of warriors who fought from horseback — the knights. So wearing pants became associated with high-status men and gradually spread to other males.

We can now safely conclude that trousers were first invented because robes are uncomfortable to wear on horseback. In fact, those who wore trousers in battle had the upper hand over those who wore robes. For this reason, civilizations all over the world adopted this form of dress to survive battles.

This brief crash course in fashion history illustrates how many elements of society, politics, and culture can be echoed or reinforced by the clothes we wear. While the ancient Greeks were horrified by trousers and thought them to be shockingly feminine, two millennia later the same attitude prevails for men wearing skirts – or at least in northern Europe. 

The story becomes more interesting and complicated when the scope is widened to the rest of the world, and this stands as a reminder of how potentially harmful attitudes towards clothing are shaped by culture and custom rather than anything inherently human.

RELATED TOPICS:#Apparel,Sanjay Lal