Regency Clothing Hilarity

[arukou]

 I’m doing research on Regency men’s fashion for reasons and I just have to share this article on “inexpressibles,” which were a type of men’s trousers so tight they apparently left absolutely nothing to the imagination. 

Choice tidbits:

“To get into them, for the first time, without the assistance of the tailor who had made them, and who, from much practice and patience, and no little ingenuity, was up to every difficulty and device in the art and mystery of ‘trying on,’ was impossible.”

“His blood, being denied a free passage in a downward direction … made his neck and face swell and his eye protrude, and turned his cheeks as red as the gills of a fish … [but] getting out of his trammels was sometimes a more awful trial than getting into them.”

“Truly, my dear Fleury, there never was a more ridiculous affair than this quarrel of ours. To fight for a petticoat might be perfectly natural; but who ever heard of a duel for a pair of black silk shorts?”