Oxford, Wednesday
Fashions, like rumors, aren’t without difficulty traced to their supply, and there appears to be no certainty as to the starting place of the wide, disheveled trousers so much in evidence in Oxford at the gift, that has attracted so much important attention on all palms.
It isn’t always even genuinely set up that the designation of the “Oxford” trousers, by way of which they’ve to turn out to be commonly acknowledged, is a strictly correct one, for the rival University of Cambridge has additionally, it seems, laid claim to the difference of having started the new style. However that can be, the extensive trousers flaunt themselves very freely within the streets of Oxford in nowadays. The fantastic majority of undergraduates have succumbed to the prevailing fashion. Some have completed so in more and some in lesser diploma, for the regulation of the baggy trousers is a very bendy one and admits of many interpretations.
An aesthete or another chief of the advanced idea in tailoring may additionally put on trousers which flap about his ft with a width of 25 inches around the ankle – the width of the everyday trousers is sixteen inches. Apart from such severe cases, trousers count on more modest proportions, varying in accordance with the daring and organization of the wearer.
The majority of the trousers which are being made in Oxford this term have an ankle width which varies among 20 and 24 inches. It is unnecessary to point out, possibly, that when the latter figure is reached trousers do no longer admit of being creased. In their more mild shape, they still bear evidence of the trouser-press; in their exaggerated shape, they merely grasp undulating, disheveled folds.
Colour and fees
In the matter of coloration, the style permits an excellent wider range for character tastes. Pale pinks and blues are some of the extra great tints, at the same time as in the meanwhile a spring-like proposal of sensitive green seems to be in a few favors. Somewhat much less said, but greater usually popular, are the range of fawn, buff, mauve, slate, lavender, and an endless form of gray and brown colorings.
The price of a couple of Oxford “bags” levels from approximately two to a few guineas and this is declared to be a totally slight discern while the consumer takes into account, not only the large quantity of material used in every pair, however additionally the more vital truth that the tailoring factories have now not yet made arrangements for turning out those articles in any huge portions. In that, absolute confidence, the factories are properly recommended, for the general opinion amongst leading Oxford tailors is that the style will be simplest a short-lived one. Indeed, one in every one of them expressed the opinion that the style is already nearly performed out. He believed that the huge trousers could go out as quickly as they got herein, and said there was already a tendency most of the very smartest to put on narrower, striped trousers, without a tune-up at the bottom. Another college tailor was taken into consideration that the present vogue couldn’t long survive the ridicule of the press and parodies of the stage. “All this publicity will kill it,” he prophesied.
The history of flares – in snapshots
Finally, the Isis, the principal organ of undergraduate opinion in Oxford, in a humorous leading article on the subject which it publishes this week, is mildly sarcastic on the fee of those who have written of the dishevelled trousers fashion as if it has been symbolic of changing masculine ideas, or maybe essential as a particular development of favor. Of such writers, the Isis says: “One and all they have determined our clothes to be symbolic of an inclination. Nobody quite knows what the tendency is, however, as you apprehend, the handi
