Chapter VIII: Petticoats and Trousers

THE BELTED PLAID AND KILT--EARLY SKIRTS--THE ANTIQUITY OF TROUSERS--TROUSER STRIPES

We were at some pains to trace the evolution of the coat from the shawl, and it is possible also to show that the petticoat, and through this even trousers, have equal claims to the same ancestry.

The plaid as we saw it in Chapter III is only a shawl, and at one time in Scotland it was used as a covering for practically the whole of the person. It was ingeniously disposed, and part of it was fastened by a belt round the waist so as to form a kind of kilt or petticoat. Hence arose the name of belted plaid. It seems to have needed a considerable amount of practice to put on this garment properly, and the method customarily adopted by the wearer was to spread the plaid on the ground and, after duly arranging it in its proper folds, to lie down upon it and fix it with the belt. Some races seem to have recognized very much earlier that it would be more convenient to separate the kilt from the upper garment. In fact, if we examine the woven garments which the Danish chieftain wore under his deer-skin cloak, at a time before the use of iron had spread to Western Europe, we find that round his loins he had a small shawl held in place by a girdle. (See Figure 75.)

The next stage in the evolution of the petticoat would be characterized by the permanent joining of the edges of the cloth, so that a garment would be formed which resembled the lower part of the tubular tunic which played its part in the evolution of the shirt or coat. Such a state of affairs is to be seen in the simple skirt of the Danish chieftainess whose bodice we have already described. (See page 18.) Here the petticoat was not shaped in any way at the top, but was gathered in round the waist and fastened as in the case of the man with a girdle.

In a warm climate it would be easy to dispense with a covering for the upper part of the body, and one of the simplest dresses imaginable was adopted in ancient Egypt. This costume is to be seen on the figure of a woman belonging to the Sixth Dynasty (3500 B.C.), which we have already mentioned when tracing the development of the hat-band and ribbons. (See Figure 45.) In this instance there is a simple tight-fitting skirt reaching to the waist or a little above it, which is supported by two straps passing between the bare breasts and over the otherwise naked shoulders. (See Figure 76.)

It seems certain, as in the original carving the woman is shown with a burden on her head and in the act of driving a calf before her, that she is a representative of the peasant class. In the Korea at the present day, women of the lower orders, although they adopt a jacket which covers their arms and shoulders, wear so short an one that as there is no garment beneath it leaves their breasts quite bare. (See Figure 77.) Such an arrangement would obviously facilitate the nursing of children, and this fact has been advanced as the reason for its adoption. Still it may be merely a fashion such as some women, at the other end of the social scale, once adopted in our non-tropical country. In the time of James I of England, the noble ladies, while they wore an exaggerated ruff round their necks, nevertheless had their dresses cut away from just below it almost to their waists.

The short kilt now worn in Scotland represents the lower part of the belted plaid, and is in fact a petticoat and specially interesting, seeing that it is a survival of this type as a man's garment. Of the origin of the sporran which is worn in front of the kilt, little seems to be known, and though it recalls to mind the time when men were clothed in skins, it forms a pouch as well as an ornament, and possibly also may have been useful as a protection. (See Figure 78.)

Having once derived the petticoat, however, from the ancestral shawl, it is a very simple matter to proceed and evolve a pair of trousers. As a matter of fact, the Eastern women, when they fasten their petticoats between their ankles for convenience in walking, demonstrate the first stage in the production of bifurcated garments.

A single row of stitches will give rise to a kind of divided skirt, while two seams and a single cut made between, and parallel, to them, will produce a pair of trousers.

It would be strange if so simple a process, which under many conditions results in such a great improvement, had not been put into practice in very early times, and trousers, although they seem to typify the ugliness of modern costume, are in reality surrounded by a halo of antiquity. It is only right, however, to point out that these tubular garments were in olden days not associated with the highest civilization. The Romans, for instance, did not wear trousers, though the nations whom they were pleased to call barbarians, did. Some of the enemies of Rome are shown on Trajan's column wearing nether garments of the kind most familiar to us, and our illustration is taken from the representation of a barbarian soldier carved on an ivory diptych of St. Paul. (See Figure 79.)

The kilt is sometimes called the garb of old Gaul, but one province of the latter owes its name--Gallia Braccata--to the custom among its inhabitants of wearing braccæ or breeches. In our own country trousers were in vogue before the advent of the Roman conquerors, and though for a time the dress of the invaders was adopted by those who followed their fashions, we find that in the time of the Saxons and Normans the barbarian style found favour once more.

In the picture of a Saxon fighting man (see Figure 80), we see that he wears trousers that somewhat recall those of the modern sailor, and there seem to have been many different styles even in those early days.

During the course of our history, long trousers went out of fashion for a very considerable period, though knee-breeches of various kinds flourished from time to time, until recently, when the original and less elegant garment once more triumphed and became part of the everyday dress of men. Boys still wear knickerbockers in one stage of their development, intermediate between the doffing of the petticoat and the donning of the trouser, and there is a tendency, that does not diminish, for the shorter garments to be used by men of all ages when they are not occupied with formal business.

Trousers are often wrongly thought to be a modern invention, and it is easy to go away with the idea that they are exclusively the attributes of men. This is far from being the case, and as in Scotland we find the petticoat still in use by men, so in France and Switzerland (see Figure 81) we see the peasant woman wearing trousers of the ordinary type, to say nothing of Oriental countries like Persia and Siam (see Plate V), where trousers form part of the dress of women even of the highest rank.

_PLATE V._]

We must not forget the energetic crusade which is being carried on in this country in favour of "rational dress" for women, on lines which are more sensible than those laid down by Mrs. Bloomer, whose name has been immortalized in connection with divided garments for women. It is not intended, at the moment, to enter into a discussion of the advantages that may be gained by banishing the skirt, as we shall consider clothes, from the point of view of their effect upon the body, in a later chapter. Suffice it to say that the ugly clothes worn a few years ago by lady bicyclists who, while adopting divided garments, tried to make them look like a skirt, did much to hinder the "rational dress" movement.

There is one vestige in connection with trousers that we may mention before leaving this subject, and that is the stripes which are to be seen on many official dresses, and which have been adopted by some men in their evening dress of recent years. It seems that this takes us back to a row of buttons which were once used along the whole length of the breeches when these were too tight for the foot to be put through them, and in consequence they had to be undone and done up again along the side of the leg. (See Figure 82.)

There is little doubt but that the stripe represents a fold of cloth that in some cases covered up these buttons. Just a few of such buttons are still to be seen on riding breeches and those worn by liveried servants.