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Welcome to the board, Johnni! I see this is your first post.Quote:
Originally Posted by JohnniX
All I can add is, out of Europe's 715 million people (living west of the Urals, that is), I sure hope there's more than one man who wears a skirt to the office! Fortunately I'm sure there is. All the best! :)
It was pop star Harry Styles that recently caused an "uproar" because he dared to wear a "dress" on the cover of Vogue magazine. :rolleyes:
https://www.vogue.com/article/harry-...-december-2020
It was mostly conservatives who had a problem with it, saying manly men are going away, or whatever.
Even though I'm married I think Harry looks pretty cute in the photos. And the Gen-Z kids think so too.
Lori
No johnni was right, just 1 in Europe
Big john from Berlin, that?s it 😀
Comments with out thought, or comments to erk a response, are common on talk shows. Consider the source. We all know many men like skirts, some even on themselves.
Gee, Kirsty, I didn't know about this guy. Thank you for educating me! So maybe the German edition of Vogue didn't have a photo of Harry Styles on the cover wearing a dress?Quote:
Originally Posted by Kirsty2907
In other words, talk shows are full of Trolls, right? ;)Quote:
Originally Posted by Leslie Mary S
Hey Leslie, that was witty!Quote:
Originally Posted by Leslie Mary S
I'm sorry to say, Kellyanne, history doesn't work that way. I noticed DianeT remarked that "history is written by the winners"--and history is also made by the winners. The trouble is that the "winners" change all the time! Just like the Super Bowl. When it came to Rome, the Barbarians won in the end!Quote:
Originally Posted by kellyanne
Alaric the Visigoth sacked Rome in 410, and she never really recovered after that. Slowly the whole Roman Empire fell apart, as it had been doing for centuries, and got overrun by Visigoths, Ostrogoths, and just plain Goths, not to mention Huns, Vandals and whatnot. By the sixth century the Goths were running the show. Meanwhile in Britain in the far north, where the Romans had conquered the native Britons, they in turn had been overrun by a bunch of German tribes. And so on.
Of course, the descendants of Romans did recover, and by early modern times were playing important roles in art, trade and the like. But they never did regain their position as the world's "top dogs," except in the world of opera, arguably in sports cars, and (for a long time) the continued use of Latin for universal communication. It was the descendants of barbarians who brought civilization to its newest heights in recent centuries: the descendants of Gauls, and of the Saxon tribes who beat the pants off the Roman general Varus (or they would have done if he he'd been wearing any!) in the Teutoberg Forest in 9 AD. The Roman legions never had much luck in Germany. And descendants of the barbarian Vikings of the far north, who terrified Europe for centuries, and settled everywhere from Britain and Normandy all the way to Kiev. It's ironic that the very name of the country of "Russia" comes from the name "Rus" applied to the Vikings who overran the Slavic regions. By the time these groups of conquering barbarians got really civilized in the last few centuries, they were all wearing pants. The men were, anyway.
So what has clothing got to do with all this? Although the sway of a toga may be "dignified," pants are practical. For certain purposes anyway. On horseback for one thing. Ladies in ankle-length dresses either have to hitch them up (which is immodest) or are reduced to riding side-saddle: not a good way to control a horse. So one thing the British brought back from India was the jodhpur, a particular type of Indian trouser that was promptly adopted not only by polo players but by women especially for riding. (And of course, we all know what Amelia Bloomer invented, which gained renewed popularity during the bicycling craze of the 1890s.)
As for Rome, they never made as much use of cavalry in warfare as they could have done. Cavalry (and chariots) weren't so great in the hilly country around Rome itself, and the Romans were stick-in-the-muds in some ways. Being "top dogs" at the time, they didn't always see the need to adapt to different environments. Meanwhile a lot of those barbarians were nomads who lived their lives on horseback. The Huns for instance were expert mounted archers, deadly in warfare. The Romans had the high civilization, with fine buildings, statues, aqueducts, hypocausts, baths, circuses, a Senate and whatnot. But the barbarians were tough and adaptable, with ingenuities of their own, and knew how to survive in rough conditions and win. And they were learning all the time. Did Rome "fall," as people say... or was she pushed? Mostly the latter, I'd say.
However, the real advantage of pants is that they're cold-weather clothing. Skirts and dresses (or "robes") are fine for warm climates. Traditional Arab dress for instance is ideal for a hot country. It keeps the blazing sun off the skin, while allowing air circulation underneath to keep cool. But when it's freezing cold, pants cover far more and keep people warmer. And pants, apparently, originated out there on the plains of Asia where it can get pretty chilly at times, and where many of these barbarians came from. "Mongolian trousers conquered the world," wrote Morris Bishop in his classic 1968 book on The Middle Ages. (To give them their due, many Native Americans in colder climates wore pants as well, or leggings at least.)
This is highly relevant, because the torch of technological progress, on which civilization is based, eventually passed from Rome to the colder regions farther north, where pants proved more practical. The reasons for this are essentially environmental: ecological, climatic, geographic, geological--the same reasons that centers of human development had been shifting from one place to another for ages, too complicated to go into here. But pants won out in the end, and have even made great inroads into the world of female costume. A pity, in my view, since I love female clothing expressly because it is uniquely female. Others may disagree.
However, the sexes still like on the whole to distinguish their clothing styles from one another's. So no sooner had women adopted pants than we started seeing uniquely "female" variations, from tight jeans showcasing the shape of the leg to capris and loose "harem pants," even crazy styles like ripped jeans. So the bottom line, as I mentioned earlier, is that I don't see skirts for men taking off in a big way any time soon, Certainly not unless women stop wearing skirts altogether, which I don't expect them to do.
Personally I think men in skirts is just a fringe fashion I doubt it will go mainstream in the foreseeable future. This will go the same way as make up for men, splashed over mags etc but no cut through.
He is (or was? ) a member here: Mark B. I don't recall seeing posts from him recently.Quote:
Originally Posted by JohnniX
I once got in to it when I told a Scotsman that, without his Sporran (purse), that his kilt looked just like the skirts girl wears while going to a Catholic school.