Who was the bright spark that decided we should wear white or light-colored breeches when showing?
Obviously, not a competitor.
Competitors know the daily struggle of keeping clean around horses. In the barn, it doesn’t matter if we get dirty because no one is judging us. Well, someone might, but we aren’t paying for it, so their opinion is of little concern.
However, when we go to horse shows we instantly find ourselves slipping into white or beige breeches, which attracts dirt like I’m attracted to cake, which is to say, a lot.
We pull on our pallid breeks and immediately run our hands around our hips and backside and wonder if perhaps they are a bit too tight. We look in the mirror to confirm or dispel our suspicions of cellulite or the always popular underwear line. I don’t know why we bother checking because we have no other option than to tough it out despite what the mirror may reflect.
Do men do the same thing when they put on their tighty-whitey breeches?
The FEI, USEF and EC have made stark breeches a rule for recognized classes, and we are bound by the powers that be to forever thrust ourselves into this questionable wardrobe choice, cellulite or otherwise.
The big question I always have and the hardest to answer is why? Why white/beige riding pants in a notoriously dusty, muddy, sandy, rainy, windy and weather varied sport that takes place on large swaths of natural terrain? We’ve been set up to fail or at very least become smudge-ridden.
Why white?
My search for the why was futile, but I did find one speculative theory out in the ether that I felt had some potential.
In the 1800s when the mucky-mucks of the world pranced around on horses through the parks of London the men wore light-colored breeches. White was the color of choice because it proved, without having to say a word, that they had hired help. Hired help meant they had money to employ others to do, for lack of a better word, their dirty work. To those and such as those clean white breeches equated money. It’s always down to money.
Then I recalled something I wrote in the “Polo-rama” story posted a short while ago (afterall, whom better to quote than oneself?): “Polo players wore white in an attempt to ward off the heat as it can get mighty hot in India. This choice of color, or lack thereof, though used out of necessity soon became a tradition and a rule.”
Does heat play a role in why we are forced into the unflattering, insecurity-inducing color of white, or is it something that we stole from the aristocrats of the 1800s, or do we do it simply to look sharp? That is the question.
My next port of call was to be the history of breeches. That history, however, interweaves with other leg coverings such as knee-breeches, pantaloons, trousers, knickerbockers and plus-fours, and the names of each often exchanged, making the waters of discovery murky and deep. So, for now, I will leave that a mystery.
As an aside
Jockeys too are told to wear white breeches when racing, though theirs are much looser fitting. When looking up these riding pants I felt they resemble knickerbockers due to their loose-fitting style until the material tightens at the knee. It’s here that the material ends in true knickerbocker fashion, and in the racing world, less material means less weight to lug around. The other note-worthy mentionable is that jockey’s racing breeches come in different weights, the lightest I was able to find was 80 grams, which is 2.8 ounces. I have a small yam in the house that weighs twice that much.
However
I may not be able to answer why we show in white pants, but I wouldn’t be the #horsewordnerd if I didn’t look into why we wear pants at all.
Once again, we have horses to thank. Before people wore pants, they strode around in tunics, robes or the college favorite, togas. You can imagine with all that draping material riding a horse would result in a lot of flapping material, panicking horses and a wee bit of chafing.
Centuries ago, wars and battles were often won and lost depending on whether your side of the fight wore pants. The pants helped to win wars because of the robe’s innate ability to tangle, its inability to protect and offer little comfort.
Those battle-scarred yet triumphant riders of war were held in high regard, and they were easy to spot about town precisely because they wore pants. Men of a more common ilk with the desire to be noticed and hopefully mistaken for someone of a higher status adopted a love for pants, and it wasn’t long before the practicality of such a garment became evident.
It is believed horsemen and women have been riding in pants as far back as 470 BC, though the Greeks and Romans snubbed the idea of such leg coverings feeling they looked silly and something only barbarians would wear. It seems the fashion industry was cutthroat back then as well, though both literally and figuratively.
For now
We have no choice but to embrace our white or light-colored breeches. We may not love the way we look in them, but I think we can all agree they look great on us, at least in the show ring.
Sources:
Live Science: Why We Wear Pants