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Post reblogged from FUCK YEAH HISTORY CRUSHES !!
This post is dedicated not to a specific figure in history, but rather to the beautiful time period when men proudly bared their legs in a thin layer of silk. Hosen(what a lovely irregular plural) evolved from traditional leg wrappings in the Middle Ages as men began to rock some short and saucy tunics.
Eventually, as the Europeans got sluttier and their doublets got shorter, the garment fused into a single entity instead of two separate pieces, something like modern tights. The development of increasingly provocative doublets also necessitated the wearing of codpieces, an excessively awkward garment now only worn by people with awkward fetishes and the metal band Gwar. Often, the legs were different colors for added stylistic flair.
The 1600s were a bit more sympathetic to pants than the 1500s had been. There were several common styles of hosen, including the trunk hose, a short and puffy form, which were worn over tight over-the-knee cannions. This style is modeled here by the sculpted legs of dashing Sir Walter Raleigh.
By the 1700s, hosen had split into the distinct garments of breeches and stockings. This charming combination was all the rage during the French Revolution, at least for the bourgeois and is responsible for the name Sans-culottes(without silk breeches) for the militant lower class revolutionaries as they wore long pants instead, those barbarians.
Robespierre
The calve-baring style also featured heavily in the American Revolution and was often sported by the Founding Fathers from Thomas Jefferson to Alexander Hamilton.
Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson
Sadly stockings ultimately developed into boring old socks as men got progressively less awesome. This concludes an examination of tights-wearing men through the ages.
