Weekend Edition #30: The Golden Age of Pants

What kind of pants does a psychic wear? Just a paranormal pants!

Hi!

The U.S. election is a little over a week away, it’s been over 70 degrees in New York City, it hasn’t rained here in almost a month, and hurricane recovery is ongoing in the south. The world is a little topsy-turvy, to say the least.

But there’s a small silver lining: we’re living in the Golden Age of Pants.

Now, I don’t mean to make light of our current events, but this is a fashion newsletter, and I think the current state of our pants reveals a lot about our world today.

Per usual, let’s start at the beginning, or at least the beginning of the 20th century. If you trace a line through the last hundred years, you’ll find that Western women’s silhouettes flip-flopped between the S-line and the H-line every decade or so. The S-line is all curves, and considered more “feminine,” while the H-line is straighter, more “boyish,” with strong shoulders and long legs. The 20th century kicked off with the S: women wore corseted dresses, with cinched waists and ballooning skirts and sleeves. …