Who wears the pants around here?

This morning, I got out of bed and mindlessly pulled on a pair of jeans. Since I live in the country and am semi- retired, a pair of jeans usually covers any situation a country girl might encounter during a humdrum day. I have a few famous women to thank for my no-brainer decision on what to wear - Marlene Dietrich and Katherine Hepburn being the first that come to mind.

But before I talk about some of the women to whom we owe the wonderful freedom of pants, let me tell you how my day started. My first task (after downing a cup of coffee) was to go on a hunt for my cat, Sam, who is sick and on a medication avoidance vigil. I found the king of my little jungle positioned safely under a shrub, which he knows I couldn’t crawl under, not even on a wish. As I write this, he is still in his safe place, waiting patiently for me to forget the whole nasty business of shoving a vial of antibiotics between his feline fangs. You’ll soon see who wears the pants around here, Sam.

Medicating Sam is nothing short of an Amazonian feat,which brings me to something I discovered about the Amazons that has some bearing on the subject of pants. There’s an Ancient Greek vase in the British Museum upon which is painted an Amazon wearing…you guessed it…pants. This vase is dated 470 BC. Whether the Amazons existed is a subject of debate, however, here’s food for thought. According to Wikipedia, “Trousers first enter recorded history in the 6th century BCE, with the appearance of horse-riding Iranian peoples in Greek ethnography. At this time, not only the Persians, but also allied Central Asian peoples such as the Bactrians, Armenians, and the Tigraxauda Scythians are known to have worn them. Trousers are believed to have been worn by both sexes among these early users.”

Moving fast-forward into the 20th century AD,we see the emergence of pants as popular female attire. Although I couldn’t find a photo of Bette Davis in pants, she was among the vanguard of Hollywood stars who transformed what had been the exclusive domain of men into a fashion statement for women during the 1930s. However, showing up at functions in menswear wasn’t the only way in which Davis was a pioneer. She was the first female president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the first woman to receive a Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Film Institute and the first person of either sex to receive ten Academy Award nominations for acting. Other women who dared to wear pants at a time when such a thing was sure to raise eyebrows were Joan Crawford, Katherine Hepburn and Marlene Dietrich who appeared in her signature men's suits on and off screen.
But were these famous movie stars the first modern women to break through the barrier that divided men and women’s clothing? I think not as I recall a story my grandmother once told me. She was invited to a dance and could not afford a gown. Determined not to miss the event, she borrowed a suit from a friend’s brother and went dressed as a man. This took place before Grandpa started courting her. I don’t remember the exact year they married (after a long courtship), but my mother, their first child, was born in 1922. I can therefore safely say Grandma arrived at that dance dressed in men’s clothing quite some time before the dawn of the year 1920, considerably more than a decade before Dietrich set the stage for men’s-style suits.

It would be remiss of me to omit the pit brow girls who scandalized mid 19th century English society by wearing pants for their work at the Wigan coal mines. The pit brow girls weren’t the only 19th century women to break the rules where fashion was concerned. Here on the other side of the Atlantic, the cowgirls were also wearing trousers as they rode the ranches of the American West. Thanks to these women who paved the way for us, we have our pick of pants, from the flowing harem style to skin-tight jeans. They’re available in every imaginable fabric from linen to metallic lycra. And what about shorts, you ask? Well, that’s another story. I’ll save that one until summer.

Do you know how much Dorothy's ruby slippers sold for at a Christie's auction in 2000? I'll be writing about that and more in my mid-month post, so please come back and visit.

Elle Magazine’s pants line-up for Fall:
http://www.elle.com/Elle-Shops/Elle-Shops/Products/%28designers%29/Alexander+Mcqueen/%28categories%29/Pants+%26+Shorts

The new men’s look trend at Net a Porter:
http://www.net-a-porter.com/?cm_mmc=GoogleUS-_-Brand%20-%20Alone%20EX_US-_-ALONE%20-%20Net%20A%20Porter-_-net%20a%20porter