Culottes Vs. Pantaloons

For many years, a question has burned in my mind: When did the switch over from knee breaches to long pants happen? And why? Who was the first guy to show up to the social event of the season wearing long pants and subsequently scandalizing the gentry? Conversely, who was the first guy to show up wearing knee breaches, illiciting the snickers and stares of the fashionistas wearing long pants?

Last night I went to a bar where a band called Les Sans Culottes was playing. I didn't actually get in, because by the time I had the cover-money in my hand, the place had filled to capacity; that's a story for another time, or maybe never. What really interested me was their name: as stupid as this sounds, it reminded me of Funky Phantom. Here's a refresher:






And in case you need more:

Wikipedia - The Funky Phantom


I have to admit that I didn't become aware of this character until his appearance on Harvey Birdman: Attorney at Law. A regular character posed this question:

"I'm seeing a hat, a cravat, and what are those, sans-culottes? So I gots to know: what make you think you're so funky?"

The answer came in the form of a hip-hop video featuring dancing bitches, a horse-drawn carriage with hydraulics and phat rimzz, Antonin Scalia and Pat Buchanan. Hilariously current! In any case, back to the pants. Despite clearly being a member of the aristocracy of the late 18th century, Funky Phantom chooses to wear long pants; perhaps this is an element of his funkiness. But when you consider the main group that wore sans-culottes, it becomes clear that pants were more than just a fashion statement; they were also a political statement.

Of course I realize that the writers of Birdman were only trying to write an outrageous joke featuring an old Hanna-Barbera cartoon character and recognizable contemporary political figures (sad that Scalia can be called a political figure, since politics should theoretically never come into play in the Supreme Court); nonetheless, they may have stumbled into a very loaded set of circumstances. If you took a look at the wikipedia article on Sans-Culottes, you have seen that it was a term coined by the French aristocracy for peasants and the working class who did not wear the fashionable knee-breeches of the higher classes. It makes sense: the lower leg was usually covered by knee stockings and a set of buckled shoes, which would be terribly inefficient to wear during intense physical labor. The stockings would run and tear, whereas long pants would cover the leg adequately from brambles in the field or falling sparks or other detritus in factories. So now that that's clear, back to Funky Phantom. Since his aforementioned tricorner hat and cravat make it clear that he was a member of the aristocracy (he put similar articles of clothing on his fucking cat, for Christ's sake) why would he choose to buck the fashion of the time and wear long pants?

You may or may not know this, but Funky Phantom became trapped in his house during the revolutionary war and was not released until a group of kids not unlike the Scooby Doo gang stumbled into his home and freed him. In the Birdman video, he is clearly down with Scalia and Pat Buchanan. Do you see where I'm going with this? Funky Phantom is George W. Bush! The long pants are part of his populist affectation, but when the war came knocking on his door, he promptly turned tail and ran, letting the people he hoped to identify with do the dirty work. Granted, there was no Republican Party yet, so he was probably a Federalist with proto-republican leanings.

So we have a partial answer: long pants were introduced by the working class, not as a fashion statement, but out of necessity. Cartoon ghosts with heavy political prescience aside though, the working class cannot account for the switchover in the upper classes. Typically the upper classes try to hang on to the earmarks of their lives of leisure, and since knee-breeches are so laden with delicacy, refinement, and inefficiency (read "decadence"), it's difficult to reconcile the plummet in popularity the would experience in the coming years.

I can't say I have a real answer, but I do have a theory. There is only one class that mixes attributes of the lowest among the working class and some of the highest strata of the aristocracy: the military class. Around the turn of the century, the United States was still in the midst of military birth-pangs, and in France, there was total social upheaval. Lesson from the Guerilla-style Revolutionary war must have taught the militias of the time of the disadvantages of wearing sheer stockings into battle, and indeed, early military uniforms show long-pant early adopters could be found in the ranks of the military.

I wish I had more to say on the subject. I still wonder about the first man to be laughed at for wearing knee-breeches in a roomful of snooty sans-culotte wearers. I wonder how present this question was in the mind of the creators of Funky Phantom. I wonder how the band Les Sans-Culotte sounds, and if they're aware of the wry nod to fashion, politics, and populism in history their name represents. Most of all, though, I wonder when the short-pant-and stocking combo will come roaring back, and whether any of us will be ready for it. Word to your mother.