Knickerbockers (clothing)
Knickerbockers,or knickers in the United States (US), are a form of baggy-kneed
The fashion was imported from the US to Britain around the 1860s and continued until the 1920s, when it was superseded by above-knee-length short trousers (shorts), probably due to the popularity of the scouting movement whose uniform included shorts. Towards the end of this period, knickerbockers may have been more of a "fancy" dress item, for formal occasions, rather than everyday wear. At around 13 years, boys exchanged their knickerbockers for long trousers.[3]
History
The name "Knickerbocker" first acquired meaning with
After Irving's History, "Knickerbocker" had become by 1831 a local byword for an imagined old Dutch-descended New York aristocracy, their old-fashioned ways, their long-stemmed pipes, and knee-breeches long after the fashion had turned to slacks. (Such cultural heritage sprang almost entirely from Irving's imagination and became a well-known example of an invented tradition.) "Knickerbocker" became a byword for a New York patrician, comparable to a "Boston Brahmin".[5]
The "New York Knickerbockers" were an amateur social and athletic club organized by Alexander Cartwright on Manhattan's (Lower) East Side in 1842, largely to play "base ball" according to written rules, the first organized team in baseball history; on June 19, 1846 the New York Knickerbockers played the first game of "base ball" organized under those rules, in Hoboken, New Jersey, and were trounced, 23–1. The Knickerbocker name stayed with the team even after it moved its base of operations to Elysian Fields in Hoboken in 1846. The baseball link may have prompted Casey Stengel to joyously exclaim, "It's great to be back as the manager of the Knickerbockers!" when he was named pilot of the newborn New York Mets in 1961.
Knickerbocker gave the name of the locally-brewed "Knickerbocker Beer" brewed by Jacob Ruppert and the first sponsors of the TV show Tonight!,[6] hence the gossip columnist "Cholly Knickerbocker", the pen name of Igor Cassini, as well as the extremely high-toned Knickerbocker Club (still in a neo-Georgian mansion on Fifth Avenue at 62nd Street, which was founded in 1871 when some members of the Union Club became concerned that admission policies were not strict enough) and the New York Knicks, whose corporate name is the "New York Knickerbockers".
The Knickerbocker name was an integral part of the New York scene when the Basketball Association of America granted a charter franchise to the city in the summer of 1946. As can best be determined, the final decision to call the team the "Knickerbockers" was made by the club's founder, Ned Irish. The team is now generally referred to as the Knicks.
Use in sporting endeavors
Knickerbockers have been popular in other sporting endeavors, particularly golf, rock climbing, cross-country skiing, fencing and bicycling. In cycling, they were standard attire for nearly 100 years, with the majority of archival photos of cyclists in the era before World War I showing men wearing knickerbockers tucked into long socks. They remained fairly popular in Britain (where they were called "breeks" or "trews") in the years between World War I and World War II, but eventually were eclipsed in popularity by racing tights, even among the vast majority of cyclists who never raced. Invariably referred to as "knickers" in the US, they lived on as a just-past-the-knee variant of racing tights reserved for colder-weather riding.
Knickers are still worn as part of the conventional uniform in fencing. Knickerbockers are often worn in baseball as pants, a custom that has been practiced even since long pants became widely used in the US. The traditional knickerbockers of old were more like pants that had been folded back with long socks.
Style
During the early 1980s, media interest in the then-Lady
In Japan
In Japan, tobi trousers—similar to knickerbockers—are worn by construction workers, and their popular length has significantly increased over time, lowering the baggy part down the bottom of the leg like plus-fours and plus-sixes, and sometimes to the feet like trousers.
Knickers: Great Britain
In the United Kingdom, Ireland, and some Commonwealth nations, the term knickers is used for women's
In media
See also
- Bloomers (clothing)
- Breeches
- Jodhpurs
- Knickerbocracy
- Plus fours
References
- ISBN 9-7803-1338-6664.
- ^ "Making History - Short trousers". BBC - Radio 4. Retrieved 2018-08-06.
- ^ "knickerbocker". Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1). Random House, Inc. retrieved 2008-1-3
- ^ Frederic Cople Jaher, "Nineteenth-Century Elites in Boston and New York", Journal of Social History 6.1 (Autumn 1972), pp. 32–77.
- ^ "Tonight!" Knickerbocker Beer Show, 1953.
External links
- pattern
- On-line Etymology Dictionary
- "Knickerbocker: Origins of the name": some New York colonial genealogy
- Tim Wiles, "Letters in the Dirt:" no. 14
- "Japanese Construction Worker Fashion" Archived 2007-07-05 at the Wayback Machine
- Knickers Archived 2009-09-29 at the Wayback Machine From the Historical Boys' Clothing website
- Why Knickerbockers?