Man's Breeches (Pantaloons)1820s

On view:

Geffen Galleries

Mannequin dressed in a Regency-era men's ensemble: navy double-breasted tailcoat with gold buttons, cream fitted trousers, white stockings, black patent shoes, and a black top hat, holding a black walking cane

Museum mannequin displaying early 19th-century men's ensemble: navy blue tailcoat with gold buttons, patterned waistcoat, white fitted trousers, white ruffled cravat, black top hat, black flat shoes, and a dark walking cane held in the right hand.

Title: Man's Breeches (Pantaloons)
Place Made: Scotland
Date Made: 1820s
Medium: Silk plain weave (crepe)
Dimensions: Inseam length: 24 1/4 in. (61.595 cm); Side length: 37 in. (93.98 cm)
Credit Line: Purchased with funds provided by Suzanne A. Saperstein and Michael and Ellen Michelson, with additional funding from the Costume Council, the Edgerton Foundation, Gail and Gerald Oppenheimer, Maureen H. Shapiro, Grace Tsao, and Lenore and Richard Wayne
Accession Number: M.2007.211.1076
Classification: Costumes
Collecting Area: Costume and Textiles
Curatorial Notes: Body-conscious silk pantaloons were a fashionable pant style for men’s formal wear through the first half of the nineteenth century. The trend reflected an intellectual shift toward Romanticism, which drew inspiration from the natural world, aesthetics, and emotion. As a result, fashions were made to glorify the human form. Men’s wool tailcoats were constructed into an idealized hourglass silhouette, with the front cut above the hips to reveal trousers that softly outlined the lower half of a man’s physique. Not since the Renaissance had men’s jacket hems risen above the hipline. This example is made from a silk crepe, which has an extremely drapey quality that would have further accentuated the male body underneath. The white pantaloon also aligned with the fashionable craze to mimic ancient sculpture in dress for both men and women of the Neoclassical era: the form recalls an idealized Greco-Roman nude statue whose original paint has worn away leaving the stark white carving.

The silk pantaloon was commonly paired with white silk stockings and black pumps. A padded vest, usually made of a nonreflective woven silk or velvet, further emphasized a broad chest. Coupled with the thoughtfully engineered tailcoat over a pressed linen shirt and cravat or stock around the neck, such an ensemble—with its subtle finesse and mindful fit—became the marker of highly prized gentility in a newly democratic period, and the coming of age for the so-called “dandy.”

Clarissa M. Esguerra

2024
Selected Bibliography: Takeda, Sharon Sadako and Kaye Durland Spilker. Fashioning Fashion: Deux Siècles de Mode Européenne, 1700-1915. Paris: Arts Décoratifs; Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Munich; New York: Delmonico Books-Prestel, 2013.
Takeda, Sharon Sadako and Kaye Durland Spilker. Fashioning Fashion: European Dress in Detail, 1700-1915. Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Munich; New York: Delmonico Books/Prestel, 2010.
Takeda, Sharon Sadako and Kaye Durland Spilker. Fashioning Fashion: Europäische Moden, 1700-1915. Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Munich; New York: Prestel, 2012.

Man's Breeches (Pantaloons)1820s

On view:

Geffen Galleries

Title: Man's Breeches (Pantaloons)
Place Made: Scotland
Date Made: 1820s
Medium: Silk plain weave (crepe)
Dimensions: Inseam length: 24 1/4 in. (61.595 cm); Side length: 37 in. (93.98 cm)
Credit Line: Purchased with funds provided by Suzanne A. Saperstein and Michael and Ellen Michelson, with additional funding from the Costume Council, the Edgerton Foundation, Gail and Gerald Oppenheimer, Maureen H. Shapiro, Grace Tsao, and Lenore and Richard Wayne
Accession Number: M.2007.211.1076
Classification: Costumes
Collecting Area: Costume and Textiles
Curatorial Notes: Body-conscious silk pantaloons were a fashionable pant style for men’s formal wear through the first half of the nineteenth century. The trend reflected an intellectual shift toward Romanticism, which drew inspiration from the natural world, aesthetics, and emotion. As a result, fashions were made to glorify the human form. Men’s wool tailcoats were constructed into an idealized hourglass silhouette, with the front cut above the hips to reveal trousers that softly outlined the lower half of a man’s physique. Not since the Renaissance had men’s jacket hems risen above the hipline. This example is made from a silk crepe, which has an extremely drapey quality that would have further accentuated the male body underneath. The white pantaloon also aligned with the fashionable craze to mimic ancient sculpture in dress for both men and women of the Neoclassical era: the form recalls an idealized Greco-Roman nude statue whose original paint has worn away leaving the stark white carving.

The silk pantaloon was commonly paired with white silk stockings and black pumps. A padded vest, usually made of a nonreflective woven silk or velvet, further emphasized a broad chest. Coupled with the thoughtfully engineered tailcoat over a pressed linen shirt and cravat or stock around the neck, such an ensemble—with its subtle finesse and mindful fit—became the marker of highly prized gentility in a newly democratic period, and the coming of age for the so-called “dandy.”

Clarissa M. Esguerra

2024
Selected Bibliography: Takeda, Sharon Sadako and Kaye Durland Spilker. Fashioning Fashion: Deux Siècles de Mode Européenne, 1700-1915. Paris: Arts Décoratifs; Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Munich; New York: Delmonico Books-Prestel, 2013.
Takeda, Sharon Sadako and Kaye Durland Spilker. Fashioning Fashion: European Dress in Detail, 1700-1915. Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Munich; New York: Delmonico Books/Prestel, 2010.
Takeda, Sharon Sadako and Kaye Durland Spilker. Fashioning Fashion: Europäische Moden, 1700-1915. Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Munich; New York: Prestel, 2012.