Irene Polo: ‘Will women wear pants?’

The skirts are dying

The news is so spicy, so sensational and transcendental, that it cannot be considered as simple fashion news, which is how they have given it to us. Naturally, that with many precautions and reserves by its holder: Monsieur Giuseppe Anselmi, head of the cartoonist department of one of the strongest and well -known fashion houses in Paris, guest of Barcelona for a couple of days, passing through Madrid for Madrid In business trip.

“Nothing should be said,” he objected. It is a secret and no one, neither the professionals nor the press of the branch, has yet advanced anything in this regard …

“But is it serious, Monsieur Anselmi?” –We have insisted.

-Completely. Now yes. Twenty -five years ago I am working on the suppression of the absurd female skirt and in the implementation, to replace it, of the general pants. And, like me, others have been working, actively, incessantly, year after year, waiting for the opportunity to see their studies and efforts. The 1914 war we thought he was going to help us; The civilization suffered a sufficient seizure so that it could adapt it, taking advantage of it, any novelty. But it wasn’t the time yet. The failure of the skirt-paid was still too recent.

-And now?

“Circumstances are favorable.” We are at the time of the moral and social claim of women; at the time of the triumph of the fight filed for its incorporation into the universal progressive movement. And ours is nothing more than one more conquest in this order.

-As?

-Naturally. Do you know the history of the skirt? The skirt is simply the primitive tunic. The naive and clumsy common tunic of the first ages than man, more practical, more logical and above all freer, abandoned immediately to adopt the pants, which is the only way of reasonable dress. The woman, on the other hand, locked for her social inferiority, could not do the same, and thus the skirt has reached until today, through all the evolutions of civilization, as a vestige of the ancestral injustice.

»However, its absurd and arbitrary empire is already touching its term. Yes, Miss, the skirts agonize; His death is close, very close, fortunately – Monsieur Anselmi concludes, with a sigh.

A few convincing arguments

“I haven’t convinced her?” Asks later, observing our distrustful attitude. Or is it scared?

“Man! … there is no less.”

“I don’t know why.” But if a large number of women are already spending most of the day dressed in pants! All sports teams are based on pants: Sky, riding, aviation, motorism, beach, etc. And in the uninhabillé you already know that dominates the pajamas … then?

“Then still seem unlikely that women can go down the street dressed as a man …

“What barbarity!” First of all, no sensible person who reconsider a moment can stop recognizing that that the pants represent the man and the woman’s skirt is one of the most incomprehensible and absurd topics. It is very good that the woman’s clothing is different from that of the man. All things related to both sex differ, as is natural; But not in this degree. Why should it be considered that the man has two legs and the woman two feet? Does the woman put the two feet in a single shoe, for example? And yet, nobody can think that because a woman wears a shoe on each foot as a man. Not even men’s shoes are the same as those of women. Well, why can man wear each of his legs and the woman dressed, on the other hand, he has to carry a more or less pretty shape on his shape and movement? In addition, in the East, where women have much less freedom than in the West, do not Chinese and Arabs carry pants? …

What will the new female pants be?

“Well, well,” we admit. But how do you think the woman’s pants will sit?

“Divinely, aesthetically, the male pants is already much better than the female skirt.” And if not, do a test: Imagine a man, in imagination see me, if you want, with a skirt on. Catastrophic, huh? And now, remember the women you have seen with pants in the cinema, in sport, in the magazines. Wonderful, of course. And in this last carnival, how many women have you seen disguised as pierrows, sailors, pichis, etc? And how beautiful they were! Isn’t it true?

»Well, calculate how they will be with the formal pants that we have created especially to be relegated forever to forget that tyrannical and anachronistic skirt that ridicules the advancement of our time.

“What will those ideals, Monsieur Anselmi? – we ask.

—The first, very similar to those who now carry the skiers, because we plan to introduce them in the street, in winter, expanding only the usefulness of the snow equipment … also, and using the same maneuver, we will introduce them in the room, expanding the utility From the pajamas … then, of course, they will be transformed, they will be stylized, adorning, perfecting. The female pants will not, of course, the impassibility and monotony of ours.

“And when will your validity begin?”

“Well, look next winter.”

“Any, at the end of 1933?”

-That is.

“Don’t you think it’s very soon?”

“I dare to make this glorious era of all conquests, the offense of assuming it.”

“Then, Monsieur Anselmi, does this mean that, finally, women are going to get your pants really, really and publicly?”

-Yeah; And men, for little good judgment and good taste that we have, we will have to feel very satisfied that it is so.

Anyway, gentlemen and ladies, we will see next winter.

* ‘The news’, February 29, 1932, p. 5. On February 22, another version of this same interview was published in ‘La Rambla’, entitled ‘The skirt lives its last hours’.