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On a recent guided tour of Dublin Harbor, we stopped to admire a statue called The Mariner, by John Behan. Made of distressed metal, it depicts a weathered-looking sailor clutching at anchor. And everything about it was a little over the top, including the sailor’s trouser legs, which widened further and further down until they also seemed to be holding him to the ground.
I was reminded that it was sailors who gave the world the world’s extraordinary mid-20th century fashion bells. But for the first time I wondered why they were wearing it. Our pre-tour safety protocols have emphasized what a hazardous workplace port is. How can it be suggested that maritime uniforms include trousers designed to snag or trip over?
Now, the origin of the tradition is unclear, except that it was a thing from the ground up, in more ways than one. The custom seems to have started among American sailors, some of whom due to the absence of standard uniforms adopted their own. As a naval officer noted in 1813, these included a glazed canvas cap with a stiff brim […] a blue jacket with loose buttons over the vest, and blue trousers with a bell bottom.
As late as 1978, having a flare was just as important in the ballroom as it was in the lifeboat. Not being equipped will risk social death
As far as the wide bottom served a practical purpose, when sailors walked in shallow water, they could easily roll over. However, if they find themselves in deeper water, and have time to untie them and tie the ends, they are also potential flotation devices. However, the display soon became the standard.
The British navy, usually a trend setter, finally followed suit, in the mid-1800s. It took more than a century after that before anyone decided that the man or woman on the street might want to wear things like that too.
I wonder if 1960s fashion didn’t stem from a devious plan by denim manufacturers to sell more of the material. But however it started, it became a generational display. At its peak, there are almost health and safety aspects. As late as 1978, having a flare was just as important in the ballroom as it was in the lifeboat. Not being equipped will risk social death. Then punk rock happened, delivering a drain pipe instead, and the bell bottom was sunk overnight.
Meanwhile, the politics of shorts also played a small but important role in the 20th century struggle between the Soviet Union and the West. The look was never haute couture there, but baggy, shapeless trouser legs had been part of the communist aesthetic long before the 1960s. So when Nikita Khrushchev started wearing a narrow-legged business suit, it was seen as part of his post-Stalinist reforms.
The days when Communism meant bell-cut trousers and shapeless shirts for both sexes are over, the Euro commentary opened for this newspaper in July 1964, under the title Tapered Pants Striking the East. It quotes the leader of the Bulgarian Communist Party, who spoke at a youth conference: It is far from our statement that socialism can only be built on broad feet, and that it cannot be built on narrow feet.
How many hats alone can disguise anyone is unclear, except that by simply drawing attention to the top, it has diverted attention from the bottom.
Searching for the earliest references to bells in the archives of The Irish Times, I came across a strange story from 1916, in which they were considered a threat to the life of a British sailor. The incident was recalled years later in the pages of the Letters by a man who had taken the mail boat from Dublin to Holyhead on the Friday of Easter Sunday and engaged in conversation with the sailor concerned.
The latter said he had been strolling along St Stephens Green earlier this week when a doctor suddenly pulled him into an alley and warned it was suicide to walk around wearing a British navy uniform. So as a disguise, the doctor gave him an old silk hat, in which the sailor managed to return to his ship safely.
How many hats alone can disguise anyone is unclear, except that by simply drawing attention to the top, it has diverted attention from the bottom. The letter writer himself often wondered what Dubliners made of this apparition [of a] British tar beach uniform, complete with bell-sleeved trousers and an old-fashioned hat.
But he can reassure readers that it really happened, because about 10 years after the Resurrection, he repeated the story to passengers on the train between London’s Euston Station and Holyhead. One of his listeners joked that it was a tall story in every way. Others, hitherto silent, disagree: I am the doctor, he says.
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Sources 2/ https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/bottoms-up-on-the-mysterious-origins-of-a-global-fashion-craze-1.4736497 The mention sources can contact us to remove/changing this article |
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