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 broad, disheveled trousers so much in evidence in Oxford at the gift that has attracted so much critical 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 nowadays. The great 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 and admits 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.
The daring and organization of the wearer. The majority of the trousers made in Oxford this term have an ankle width that varies between 20 and 24 inches. It is unnecessary to point out that when the latter figure is reached, trousers no longer admit being creased. They still bear evidence of the trouser-press; in their exaggerated form, they merely grasp undulating, disheveled folds.