Two men whose remains were recently excavated from tombs in western China put their pants on one leg at a time, just like the rest of us. But these nomadic herders did so between 3,300 and 3,000 years ago, making their trousers the oldest known examples of this innovative apparel, a new study finds.
With straight-fitting legs and a wide crotch, the ancient wool trousers resemble modern riding pants, says a team led by archaeologists Ulrike Beck and Mayke Wagner of the German Archaeological Institute in Berlin. The discoveries, uncovered in the Yanghai graveyard in China’s Tarim Basin, support previous work suggesting that nomadic herders in Central Asia invented pants to provide bodily protection and freedom of movement for horseback journeys and mounted warfare, the scientists report May 22 in Quaternary International.
“This new paper definitely supports the idea that trousers were invented for horse riding by mobile pastoralists, and that trousers were brought to the Tarim Basin by horse-riding peoples,” remarks linguist and China authority Victor Mair of the University of Pennsylvania.
Previously, Europeans and Asians wore gowns, robes, tunics, togas or — as observed on the 5,300-year-old body of Ötzi the Iceman — a three-piece combination of loincloth and individual leggings.
A dry climate and hot summers helped preserve human corpses, clothing and other organic material in the Tarim Basin. More than 500 tombs have been excavated in a graveyard there since the early 1970s.
Earlier research on mummies from several Tarim Basin sites, led by Mair, identified a 2,600-year-old individual known as Cherchen Man who wore burgundy trousers probably made of wool. Trousers of Scythian nomads from West Asia date to roughly 2,500 years ago.
Mair suspects that horse riding began about 3,400 years ago and trouser-making came shortly thereafter in wetter regions to the north and west of the Tarim Basin. Ancient trousers from those areas are not likely to have been preserved, Mair says.
Horse riding’s origins are uncertain and could date to at least 4,000 years ago, comments archaeologist Margarita Gleba of University College London. If so, she says, “I would not be surprised if trousers appeared at least that far back.”
The two trouser-wearing men entombed at Yanghai were roughly 40 years old and had probably been warriors as well as herders, the investigators say. One man was buried with a decorated leather bridle, a wooden horse bit, a battle-ax and a leather bracer for arm protection. Among objects placed with the other body were a whip, a decorated horse tail, a bow sheath and a bow.
Beck and Wagner’s group obtained radiocarbon ages of fibers from both men’s trousers, and of three other items in one of the tombs.
Each pair of trousers was sewn together from three pieces of brown-colored wool cloth, one piece for each leg and an insert for the crotch. The tailoring involved no cutting: Pant sections were shaped on a loom in the final size. Finished pants included side slits, strings for fastening at the waist and woven designs on the legs.
Beck and Wagner’s team calls the ancient invention of trousers “a ground-breaking achievement in the history of cloth making.” That’s not too shabby for herders who probably thought the Gap was just a place to ride their horses through.
In case the balloon arch at the entrance didn't tip guests off, last night's Stella McCartney resort presentation was her usual carnival-style affair, with diversions like a human statue, live chamber music, and models blowing bubbles, drinking champagne, and dancing. (A much better gig than presentations where models have to stand still on a podium for two hours with the occasional water break.) And as is typical with McCartney's events, a wide swath of friends and admirers joined her, from models Cara Delevingne and Jourdan Dunn to artists Jeff Koons and Marilyn Minter. (SNL honcho Lorne Michaels was there too, deep in conversation with a corporate-looking crowd.) As the model Liya Kebede put it, "People like her alot."
Many of the friendships go way back — we're talking Paleozoic era. As Liv Tyler told the Cut, "We have been friends for 300 million years. We’re dinosaurs." Helena Christensen said that the two have been pals since McCartney's early days. "[We met] like 20 years ago. When she started, we did the shows together. Back then we were just a bunch of girls hanging out, having fun. I didn’t even feel like I was working. It was just like hanging out with your friends." Christensen added that this was a rare appearance for her: "I don't really go to a bunch of shows. I feel like I checked that box," she said, adding that she did attend Dior's resort show at the Brooklyn Navy Yard. "I got a little seasick."
[....] When attendees weren't partaking in outdoor activities (the human chessboard was a popular photo op), they were talking about the throwback yin-yang prints on many of the pieces. It got several attendees thinking about the '90s. Said Hanneli Mustaparta of her attempt to revive the decade, “I’ve been wearing a mom jean — well, it’s kind of a mix between a mom jean and a boyfriend jean, so it still looks kinda hot. It’s a weird fit but in a nice way. A nice weird fit.”
Tyler said, "That’s my era, so I love it, I love it. There was something so much more relaxed about it, a little bit more playful. A little bit more of an edge. I think it wasn’t as thought-out, people were just creating looks from what they had in their closet or what came to them. I’m very nostalgic for anything '90s — music, fashion, films, all of it. I have a lot of things that I still never got rid of. ."What do I think about the clothes, not the scene, ye may ask?
When they’re not tending clients or updating inventory at the Albright Fashion Library, a supplier of fresh-from-the-runway looks to stylists, socialites and film companies, Lindsay Carr and Yael Quint like to poke around the Internet for credible approximations of their favorite high-end labels. Their jobs afford them plenty of chances to beg, borrow or buy at a discount any number of lust-worthy items from the likes of Balenciaga, Givenchy or Céline. But on a recent spring morning, Ms. Carr was turned out top to toe in Zara.
Ms. Quint sat alongside her wearing a filmy top, Céline sandals and a pair of billowing trousers. Their provenance: Zara. “Stylists who visit here are constantly asking, ‘Are you wearing Céline, are you wearing Givenchy?’ “ Ms. Quint said, adding with a hoot, “We like to tell them, ‘No, we’re wearing Zalenciaga, or we’re wearing Zéline.’ ”
If that sounds smug, it may be because Ms. Carr and Ms. Quint are pleased to claim membership in an expanding coterie of fashion insiders — magazine editors, stylists, bloggers and street-style divas — to tap Zara routinely, and repeatedly, for timely, decently priced approximations of the runways’ greatest hits.
Among tastemakers, the zeal is infectious. “We all aspire, regardless of age, height, weight and color, to be the girls on the runway,” said Kristen Henderson, a fashion blogger in Atlanta. “I feel like Zara puts you there.”
It wasn’t always so. Only a couple of years ago, Zara, with its midprice interpretations of runway trends, was a leading purveyor of cheap chic to the budget-conscious crowd, offering well-constructed, moderately stylish wares that, for the most part, steered clear of the cutting edge. A retail division of the Spanish global giant Inditex, with some 1,900 stores in 87 countries, the company does not advertise. Unlike its competition, fast-fashion chains including Topshop and H&M, it has eschewed collaborations with upscale designer labels; nor has it flooded the Internet with a barrage of tweets and social media shout-outs.
Apparently it saw no need. The company, which had close to $15 billion in sales for 2013, does not grant interviews or discuss retail and marketing strategies. Yet in the last 18 to 20 months, it has clearly sought to reposition itself as a fashion front-runner with a definable point of view.
At a time when there are few sweeping upmarket fashion trends, Zara is championing minimalism, noted Jeff Van Sinderen, a senior retail analyst for apparel with B. Riley & Company, a research and investment firm. “Their look is very aspirational, in terms of the brands they are emulating,” he said. “Focusing on clean, spare lines, like those of Jil Sander or Céline, has set them apart.” And, he might have added, turned the chain into an unlikely magnet for fashion progressives.
Not by any stretch a design innovator, Zara has nonetheless passed muster with the style-obsessed. “These days, Zara feels like a fashion brand,” said Hannah Weil, a blogger with the Pop Sugar website, who turns to the store and its website for wardrobe refreshers — “a little crop top,” she said, “or a piece that will give your look a little edge.”
She is part of a wider audience the company has courted, according to Dana Telsey of the Telsey Advisory Group, a stock research firm. “In the past year, they’ve been expanding their customer base toward more influential consumers,” she said. “That they can go up and down the ladder helps them to gain awareness and build market share.
The company relies largely on word of mouth and a high-luster website, introduced in the United States in 2011, to create a hunger for its wares. The site, which vies these days in slick production values and of-the-moment looks with those of many fashion magazines, arrived at a time when any lingering stigma attached to buying copies has all but evaporated, even among the most stubborn designer-label purists.
Segmented into men’s, women’s and children’s offerings, the site includes a separate Studio classification aimed at the vanguard and a Zara Lookbook, a magazine-like feature showcasing the company’s more advanced items, among them a short-sleeve jumpsuit with flared lapels and a double-breasted, gold-button navy blazer (each $139). Offerings with a slightly broader appeal include a stretch-cotton leaf print blazer ($99.90), a floral print calf-length skirt ($79), a fringed imitation-suede top ($69.90) and a modish selection of platform sandals and bucket bags.
The fashion devout are impressed. “Why Can’t Our Closet Be Just Like the Zara Lookbook?” Ms. Weil posted last fall on Pop Sugar. The site is clean and well curated, she elaborated in an interview. “You get a sense that everything goes with everything else.”
Her peers around the country fairly boast of their Zara dependency. “I’m addicted,” Ms. Henderson wrote on her blog, Style with Kirsten Kai. She confided that she scours local Zara outposts once a month, dropping $150 to $300 during each visit. She counts on the store for the leather pieces she covets: shorts, skirts and jackets in particular. “Everything leather that I own that’s not vintage is Zara,” she said.
Zara shares with some magazines and online fashion sites a strategy of enlisting style-world luminaries to boost its hipness quotient. Fashion media stars including Taylor Tomasi Hill, a contributor to the Gwyneth Paltrow blog, Goop, and Amanda Brooks, a former fashion director of Barneys New York, have modeled in its web pages. As pertinent, though Zara declines to confirm it, the company has engaged a handful of influential fashion stylists as “consultants,” to rework or adapt — in a word, copy — the most heat-generating runway looks for its increasingly savvy audience.
To hear from shoppers, its strategy has paid off. “In my office, Zara has become the center of so many conversations,” Ms. Weil said. “Probably because they have stepped up what they’re doing.”
Ms. Henderson voiced a growing consensus. “Whatever is out there in the marketplace, whatever is going on, Zara is right there on point,” she said. “It’s a place where women of all age ranges can shop.”
So ardent is she, one might suspect that Zara had offered incentives to feature the label on her blog. Not so, Ms. Henderson said. Zara would be one of the last brands to reach out to bloggers, she said. The fashion set’s devotion is, she maintained, spontaneous and unsolicited.
Indeed, industry professionals count themselves as among the brand’s chief boosters. “Zara has completely opened up the world to fashion people,” Ms. Quint said. “Stylists who never shopped there before are shopping there now.”
Some unabashedly show off their “gets” at fashion gatherings. “Especially at Fashion Week, there’s that wow factor,” Ms. Weil said. “People are always asking each other, ‘Oh, maybe you’re wearing Céline?’ Zara does that look really well.”
Well enough, in fact, that Céline this year took a radical step, pre-empting retailers’ efforts to “adapt” or “interpret” its much-copied collection by showing images not six months in advance of the season, but just as it is reaching stores. They could have taken lessons from Zara itself, which does not offer previews, captivating even style-sated pros with an element of surprise.
“For me, as a fashion editor, Zara is the only brand I don’t see ahead of time,” said Jade Frampton, the senior market editor at Elle magazine. “It’s the store I shop in. Every time I look around, I’m like, ‘I haven’t seen any of this before.’ ”
The label’s cool factor is catnip to Ms. Frampton, who chose to be photographed in a Zara demi-sheer pleated skirt, a style clearly inspired by the spring runways. “The silhouettes and color selection have gone up, and so has the overall quality of the merchandise.”
Trendiness is appealing to her, but quality is as decisive in determining what she will buy. “At the end of the day, you’re still spending money,” she said. “You don’t want things to fall apart when you get home.”
Is there a summer trend you’d like to go away? I feel like Birkenstocks have become unusually quotidian. I’m trying not to use the word basic. How so? The problem when a piece like Birkenstocks becomes so trendy after being so “basic” (and they actually are basic, like, the fundamentals of someone’s wardrobe) [is that] they’re so easily co-opted, so when they start to be worn the wrong way, they start to be ruined for everyone.
Is there a right way to wear them? Yeah, I think you need to wear them like you own a surfboard, with low-slung board shorts and a crop top, and some, like, reflective-lens sunglasses and messy hair, and look around and pretend like you don’t give a shit, or you actually you don’t give a shit.I subscribe to every word. Stay away, ladies. If I catch one of you wearing these outside the allotted space of no-care (home/beach) I swear I will come after you.
