Men's Fashion & Style
Out of context: Reply #1065
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Hose or men’s tights was part of the exuberantly physical, masculine court culture of the middle ages and early modern period (16th - ca. 18th century) in most of Europe. The reason men wore hose was to show they were “ripped”; the display was inseparable from the culture of flirtation and romance that sprung up around the medieval gentleman. Dancing, sports, theater and games all kept people “on their feet”, and in this respect, medieval nobility and peasant festivals were the same. The idea that seriousness is associated with stiffness and immobility came from elsewhere, associated with religion and modernity as opposed to this “pagan” excess, and only gradually imposed itself in the 17th-18th centuries.
This replacement was HIGHLY POLITICAL: bare legs and SEXY KINGS were definitely associated with the culture of the high middle ages and the incomparable splendor of the “Sun King” of France. France excited envy, and in the 18th century dominated Europe: other courts tried to differentiate themselves by adopting demure, “modest”, pious styles. The Habsburgs in the German-Roman Empire, the other great power in Europe, adopted what they called the “Spanish ceremonial”: covering black robes with gold trim, wide-brimmed hats and a lot of swishing, brooding, velvet and silence. The English of the 18th century (invoking the nominal convergence of Protestantism and Islam as pure monotheisms, as opposed to the slutty Catholic French) adopted the “Turkish vest”, ancestor of the business suit, with the nominal excuse that men showing their legs angered God and caused fires. Again, the real reason was an attempt to differentiate themselves from the French style, whose splendor other (poorer and more constrained) courts simply couldn’t imitate, so they might as well condemn.
Men’s hose went anywhere from semi-covering (along with a kilt reaching to the knee), to casting the scrotum in high relief.
