“Everything new is a well-forgotten old,” said Rosa Burten, the personal dressmaker of Queen Marie Antoinette of France. This is what happened to baggy and functional cargo pants, which are again at the peak of popularity in the new season. Vogue.ua decided to find out where the story of the legendary pants began, and how they got into the women’s wardrobe.
The first mention of cargo dates back to the 1930s. It was then that loose and practical pants with patch pockets began to be worn by British soldiers. Their defining features were the color of the military and two additional functional pockets that fasten to the valve with a button: one on the side, the other in front in the thigh. This uniform greatly simplified the lives of the military: they could use pockets instead of large backpacks, so free their hands. Spacious pockets served as storage places for equipment and inventory.
Gradually, this model gained increasing popularity. So, two years later, the advantages of cargo pants were appreciated by the US military and paratroopers, and then this functional model moved into the arsenal of work uniforms. They were worn by builders, locksmiths, miners, hunters and representatives of other male professions, the specifics of which required to have a lot of useful things.
In the era of world emancipation, cargo pants reached the women’s wardrobe. Fragile girls became willing to wear pants of a militant nature. Fashionable cargo was a symbiosis of work clothes and military style. Then they started producing Brunello Cucinelli.
But the real triumph of army pants from the wardrobe of Larry Croft came in the late 1990s – early 2000s. Cargo pants were everywhere: in movies, on the covers of fashion magazines, in the collections of legendary designers and, of course, on the streets. For example, Penelope Cruz in the adventure film “Sahara” showed stylish loose pants in the style of safari, Alicia Vikander in cargo pants fought for her father’s life in the film “Lara Croft: Tomb Raider”, and the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge went for a walk.
In the latest collections, cargo pants occupy a prominent position in women’s clothing. Designers inspired by the uniform of British soldiers presented various modifications of army trousers: narrowed to the bottom in Alberta Ferretti, with a khaki shade in Christain Dior, silk in Emporio Armani and Balmain, with all kinds of fasteners, straps and buckles in Fendi or low in Dolce & Gabbana.
