Women and Pants - the history

You probably know that some of your grandmothers ,their mothers and thousands of your female ancestors before them did not have priviledge you have today - to open their closet and pick up their favorite pair of pants.

Pants in female fashion are fairly new - women started wearing them only like 96 years ago (ok that is long time ago when put on paper,but have in mind that there are people in their 100's still alive today,so basically only 3-4 generations of women had pleasure of wearing pants in recent history of fashion! ) . Now if you are wondering how it all started continue reading.





One of the Puerto Rico's most famous labor organizers,an anarchist and woman rights fighter,  woman named Luisa Capetillo was the first one to wear trousers in public - for wich she got arrested (can you imagine!).  In 1919 she decided to challenge mainstreem society by becoming first Puerto Rican woman who wore pants in public  - as i said she got arrested because then it has been seen as a crime ,but the judge later droped the charges against her.






After Luisa more and more women dared to experiment with male clothing,and specificly with pants.
Pants offered more than skirts could offer to working women. In 20's and 30's women started wearing pants more often as leisurewear .

Famous women could not resist them either  -  Marlene Dietrich and Katharine Hepburn were often seen wearing them.

During WWII female industrial workers started wearing their husdbands trousers - wich they altered to suit them. In post war era trousers continued being used by women ,but mostly while they were gardening,socialising and so on.

Women by taking their husdbands pants and clothes in general in those hard times could save some money they would usualy spend on their female clothes .

In the 1960's a French designer Andre Courreges introducet to the world a line of female jeans,wich led to era of designer jeans!

As you can see the story of women and pants was not an easy one - it started by one brave womans wish for equality,but developed because of the need for practicality . In the end we got wide specter of fashionable pants - wich are both practical ,beautifle and empowering..