Men in Petticoats.

Te Aroha News, Volume VII, Issue 440, 25 January 1890, Page 4

Men in Petticoats.

Of all garments the petticoat is as essentially proper to women a* breeches .- re to tnen, and scorn can find no mightier weapon with which to matk down an unsexed man or woman than to represent either in the one garment of the.-e twain whicli belongs to the other. Yet it is remarkable that the petticoat was first worn by men. We bear nothing of women’s petticoats before the Tudor period. It is well known that the garment was ab first nob a skirt at all, but, as the name denotes, a little coat. How it came to be shitted below the waist is hard to be understood, unless the ‘ petite c<>at’ was made with long skirts for the sake ot warmth, and in such case it was as much a petticoat, as we understand it, as anything else. Then probably, - when the body of the garment was discontinued, the name was still retained. In the time of Charles 11. men actually wore petticoat breeches, a fashion introduce! from France, of which Randall Holmes sajs, ‘the lining was lower than the br eche-, tied above the knee, ribbons up to the pocket holes, half tho breauth of the breeches, then ribbons a'l about; the waistband, and shirt hanging out.’ and before then we find knights, as we know from their effigies, wearing short skirts of mail, reaching halfway down the thighs. There is so often such a remarkable similarity between peculiar styles of armour and ordinary fashions in dress that we a>e not surprised to find modish men in the reign of Henry VIT. and of his son wearing long plaited s irts in all manner of tich stuffs, which were only not petticoats because they were called ‘ bases.’