The origin of women’s trousers

Trousers, bifid and mysterious … (Colette)

Until a hundred years ago, most women did not wear trousers. It was a piece of clothing not granted to the female wardrobe, symbol of the masculine universe. The company was forced to tolerate them if the fair sex carried out some activities impossible to realize in a skirt. In the early nineteenth century they began to be used as a manifesto of emancipation and independence. And she who dared to bring them was looked on with disapproval, accused of immorality. On March 31, 1911, in the center of Turin, for the first time, an Italian woman wore a pair of women’s trousers, arousing enormous fanfare. They were designed by Parisian tailor Paul Poiret for the Turin Expo of that year. Only the world wars and the consequent revolution of the female role allowed their acceptance. At the end of the seventies, with the hippie movement and the spread of jeans, the trousers finally became a garment for both sexes. And since then every season has its models …