Problems in Pants

Sure, deck your lower limbs in pants; ; Yours are the limbs, my sweeting.

You look divine as you advance -- Have you seen yourself retreating?

Ogden Nash wrote those lines in the 1930s, when people still looked up every time an airplane flew over, and a woman who wore pants was either an actress or an athlete. He could hardly have foreseen the day when, at high noon, two out of every five women passing the entrance of Henri Bendel's in Manhattan would be dressed in trousers. The fact that women's pants are a fact of life (45 million pairs will be sold in the U.S. this year) is a source of solid comfort to fabric manufacturers. It takes three yards of material to make a pair of pants, v. one yard for a miniskirt. But it is also a source of problems for the women who wear them. As any man knows, pants get caught in bicycle chains. They bag at the knees, wrinkle in the rain and flap in the wind. Their cuffs collect water, dirt and lint. Their zippers fail. Pants also excite dogs.

What is more, a lot of the women who wear pants should take a cue from Ogden Nash. Designer Norman Norell says: "Every time I ship a box of pants to the stores, I worry about who is going to wear them." In Norell's trousers, which are cut straight from the hip, any woman who is not reed-thin is apt to look like a walking example of cluster zoning. A well-curved curple is absolutely essential, too, for the Yves St. Laurent pants suits that are the cat's pajamas at the moment. Although some of St. Laurent's designs are splendidly elegant, they are certainly not meant to be worn by size 14 women. Yet St. Laurent makes and sells them in size 14.

Considering the problems pants present, the current female fascination with trousers is a little baffling. Yet they appear everywhere, in all sorts of styles and at all sorts of places. Some hang from the shoulders like farmer's overalls; others hug the hips like an Italian gigolo, or stick to the thighs as if the wearer had just emerged from a shower. In denim and khaki, they go to student protests and love-ins; in lace, they go to dinner and the theater; in twill and flannel, they even go to the office.

Sexier in Slacks? There are exceptions, of course. "Although our employees dress real kicky and high fashion," says a spokesman for Tenneco Corp. of Houston, "I don't think pants would fit into that picture." On the other hand, pants are fairly common around publishing companies, advertising agencies and show-business offices. Such top restaurants as Chasen's in Los Angeles and the Colony in Manhattan, both of which used to ban pants from their premises, no longer turn them away. Arriving at New York's 21 last month, Comedienne Judy Carne of Laugh-In well knew that her tunic-topped pants suit was unacceptable. With a photographer recording the scene, Judy thereupon slipped off her pants, left them at the checkroom, and stalked past the maitre d' suitably dressed in her tunic only--in fact, the miniest of miniskirts. Next day the restaurant stopped barring pants.

Anthropologist Margaret Mead, perhaps because she is a woman, thinks trousers are just fine--although she rarely wears them. "Women are looking for greater freedom--freedom from corsets, girdles, tight belts, tight shoes--just as men have been trying to get out of tight collars," she says. Norman Norell, perhaps because he is a designer, thinks that a woman actually has more sex appeal in trousers than in a dress. "Ripping off a woman's pants is sexier than ripping off a dress," he says. (And harder, it might be added.) But Sociologist-Author Charles Winick (The New People) probably comes closer to reflecting the majority masculine view. "Pants," he points out, "make extemporaneous sex more difficult." To say nothing about the fact that they also defeminize a shapely pair of legs.

Still, nothing, obviously, is going to stop females from wearing trousers--at least until the fashion winds shift. In fact, Designer Geoffrey Beene predicts that "by the year 2000, women will be wearing only pants." There is one thing that men can do to retaliate: stop wearing pants themselves. Paris Couturier Pierre Cardin expects them to do just that. Last month, when he showed his new menswear collection, the first garment displayed was a sleeveless jumper designed to be worn over high vinyl boots. In other words, a dress.

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