Women’s Trousers History – 1900s High Waisted Style Tips

In the early 1900s a woman in trousers was a scandal. Skirts ruled. Until the second half of the twentieth century, a woman wearing trousers in public was a rare sight.

So how did we get from there to a pair in every wardrobe? It took a designer, two film stars, a war and a tuxedo.

The high waist

Of all the cuts, the high waist is the one that has lasted. It sits on the waist, it pulls it in, and it is kind to the stomach. That is why vintage pairs are still worth hunting for. My own high-waisted trousers are bespoke, made for me in Vietnam.

For how to wear them, I take my inspiration from television, and from series like Miami Vice: loose pleated trousers, a soft jacket, pastel linen, nothing fussy.

Coco Chanel

Coco took women from the skirt to trousers, for the everyday practical woman. The series The New Look tells the story of the competition between Coco and Dior, and of what she created after the war.

Marlene Dietrich

Then came the cinema. Hollywood put trousers in the spotlight and turned actresses into the women everybody copied. Marlene Dietrich wore hers through the 1940s with complete confidence.

She showed that trousers were not only for the boys.

The women who wore trousers because they had to

Not everybody wore them to make a statement. Women ranchers in the American West wore trousers to work. Amelia Earhart and the other women aviators wore them as part of the uniform. Their lives demanded it.

Then the Second World War changed things at home. As the men went off to fight, women went into the factories and the fields, and trousers went with them. Women found out how comfortable and practical they were. After that, trousers moved from work to leisure: gardening, days off, casual gatherings.

But the office and the formal occasion stayed closed. You could wear trousers at home. You could not wear them to work.

That is me in the photographs below, in a tweed trouser suit and a small hat.

Katharine Hepburn in trousers in the 1940s

Katharine Hepburn made trousers part of who she was. She and Dietrich stood tall in them, and neither looked any less elegant or any less feminine for it. Quite the opposite.

Then the 1950s swung the other way. The war was over, and fashion went back to a very feminine shape: Dior’s New Look, with its cinched waist and full skirt. Most women went back to skirts and dresses, and the trousers were put away.

YSL, 1966

The 1960s and 1970s opened fashion up again. André Courrèges and Yves Saint Laurent put women in trousers, and the women’s movement was asking for the same freedom. In 1966 came Le Smoking by YSL, a tuxedo for women. After a decade of being put back into skirts, it was the answer.

Trousers go to work

The last door to open was the workplace. Trousers on a woman were once a faux pas in the boardroom. By the 1980s and 1990s, thanks to designers like Liz Claiborne, they were accepted at the office. Then they were expected.

So here’s to the women who wore trousers before it was allowed. They are the reason the rest of us can.