Considering the ubiquity of pants in contemporary costume throughout the West and more and more visibly in the East, it is interesting to note that they were not a staple in men’s fashion until very late in recorded history. Pants or trousers really only became a feature of fashion after developing from the hose and breeches of the 15th through 18th centuries. What we see men and women wearing today is a variation of something quite different that evolved in men’s costume as tunic’s became shorter in the medieval period. 
In the 12th century the tunic dropped to about knee-length and men would wear often loose-fitting hose underneath. The hose would rise above the knee and would fasten to drawers (called braies) or be held in place by leg bands, thus providing warmth and coverage but still not considered a separate garment. By the middle of the 1300s hose were made of progressively tighter knits and as they became more fitted they also rose in length to compensate for the shortening of the tunic. As the tunic shortened and gave way to the more form-fitted doublet (that initially was worn under the tunic but soon dominated as a form) the hose gained in length and would be fastened to the doublet. The doublet narrowed at the waist and flared slightly at the hips to accentuate a certain ideal of figure and the well-fitted hose complemented this. By the 14th century it was typical for hose to form a single garment (as opposed to the separate pieces for each leg) and since the doublet had become even shorter with time the hose would be refitted for modesty by the attachment of a codpiece.
Towards the 1500’s the hose again transformed and evolved to become a single garment that ended at the knee and which the wearer would complement with separate stockings held up over the knee with garters. This shorter version of the hose would lead to the padded hose which would express, in their girth, a flamboyance and degree of excess compatible with the spirit of Western Europe in the 16th and 17th centuries. The padded hose then gave way to rich silk and satin breeches that would dominate until the period of the French Revolution and the dissolution of certain class ideals and distinctions. 
During the French Revolution one aspect of costume became particularly emblematic of the movement of the people and the upheaval of the aristocratic and bourgeois society of France at the time. This was the short pant, hemmed near the ankles, that displaced the knee-length breeches (culottes) that marked the bourgeois and aristocratic classes. The men who wore the short pant in defiance of the aristocratic fashion called themselves the sans-culotte and in their costume, in solidarity with the lower classes, wanted to personify liberty, equality, and fraternity among the people.
The sans-culottes as political activists organized themselves in sections throughout France and became militant defenders of the ideals they thought would bring about an equality for the French citizen that would end the destructiveness and division of the class system under the monarchy. The sans-culottes were mainly of the less-educated class but with the strength and organization of the revolutionary movement behind them they were able to transform French society, although at the expense of justice and civility as the Revolution progressed and the revolutionaries became more militant. By 1793, a year of terror under which revolutionary tribunals sent nearly half a million ‘enemies of the people’ to imprisonment if not to their deaths, the sans-culottes and the power of Robespierre had succeeded in establishing the Republic.
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The fervor of the sans-culottes under the leadership of the Revolutionary Jacobin leaders marked them as part of the new era of French politics whereby the past, in the symbols of the monarchy, the Ancien Regime, and the church, was laid to rest and a new foundation for a new society was to replace it.
*Painting of a typical sans-culotte by Louis-Léopold Boilly (1761-1845) |
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Tags: 1793, Ancien Regime, aristocratic fashion during the French Revolution, bourgeois fashion during the French Revolution, equality, Fashion History, fashion in the French Revolution, fraternity, French bourgeoisie, French History, French Revolution fashion, history of breeches, history of pants, Jacobins, liberty, Revolutionary France, sans culottes fashion, sans-culottes
