Knickerbockers (clothing)
Encyclopedia
Knickerbockers are men's or boys' breeches
or baggy-kneed trousers
particularly popular in the early twentieth century USA. Golf
ers' plus twos and plus fours were breeches
of this type. Before World War II
, skiers
often wore knickerbockers too, usually ankle-length.
Until after World War I, in many anglophone
countries, boys customarily wore short pants in summer and knickerbockers or "knickers" (or "knee pants") in winter. At the onset of puberty, they graduated to long trousers. In that era, the transition to "long pants" was a major rite of passage. See, for example, the classic song Blues in the Night
by Johnny Mercer
: "My mammy done told me, when I was in knee-pants, my mammy done told me, son...".
Baseball players wear a stylized form of knickerbockers, although the pants have become less baggy in recent decades and some modern ballplayers opt to pull the trousers close to the ankles. The white trousers worn by American football
officials
are knickerbockers, and while they have become less baggy, they are still worn ending shortly below the knee. In recent years, the NFL has equipped its officials with long trousers rather than knickers in cold weather.
's History of New York, which featured the fictional author
Diedrich Knickerbocker, an old-fashioned Dutch New Yorker in Irving's satire of chatty and officious local history. In fact, Washington Irving had a real friend named Herman Knickerbocker
(1779–1855), whose name he borrowed. Herman Knickerbocker, in turn, was of the upstate Knickerbocker clan, which descended from a single immigrant ancestor, Harmen Jansen van Wijhe Knickerbocker
. Jansen van Wijhe invented the name upon arriving in New Amsterdam
and signed a document with a variant of it in 1682. After Irving's History, by 1831, "Knickerbocker" had become a local bye-word for an imagined old Dutch-descended New York aristocracy, their old-fashioned ways, their long-stemmed pipes, and knee-breeches
long after the fashion had turned to trousers. (Such cultural heritage sprang almost entirely from Irving's imagination and became a well-known example of an invented tradition.) "Knickerbocker" became a byword for a New York patrician, comparable to a "Boston Brahmin
".
Thus the "New York Knickerbockers
" were an amateur social and athletic club organized by Alexander Cartwright on Manhattan's (Lower) East Side in 1842, largely to play "base ball" according to written rules, the first organized team in baseball history; on June 19, 1846 the New York Knickerbockers played the first game of "base ball" organized under those rules, in Hoboken, New Jersey
, and were trounced 23 - 1. The Knickerbocker name stayed with the team even after it moved its base of operations to Elysian Fields at Hoboken, N.J. in 1846. The baseball link may have prompted Casey Stengel
to joyously exclaim, "It's great to be back as the manager of the Knickerbockers!" when he was named pilot of the newborn New York Mets
in 1961.
Hence also the locally-brewed "Knickerbocker Beer" brewed by Jacob Ruppert, the first sponsors of the tv show tonight!
; hence the gossip columnist "Cholly Knickerbocker", the pen name of Igor Cassini
; hence the extremely high-toned Knickerbocker Club
(still in a neo-Georgian mansion on Fifth Avenue at 62nd Street, which was founded in 1871 when some members of the Union Club became concerned that admission policies weren't strict enough); and hence the New York Knicks
, whose corporate name is the "New York Knickerbockers."
The Knickerbocker name was an integral part of the New York scene when the Basketball Association of America
granted a charter franchise to the city in the summer of 1946. As can best be determined, the final decision to call the team the "Knickerbockers" was made by the club's founder, Ned Irish
. The team is now generally referred to as the Knicks.
Indeed, in cycling they were standard attire for nearly a hundred years, with the majority of archival photos of cyclists in the era before World War I
showing men wearing knickerbockers tucked into long socks. They remained fairly popular in Britain (where they were called "breeks" or "trews") in the years between World War I and World War II
, but eventually were eclipsed in popularity by racing tights, even among the vast majority of cyclists who never raced. Invariably referred to as "knickers" in the US, where the British definition of that term is unknown, they lived on as a just-past-the-knee variant of racing tights reserved for colder-weather riding.
During the early 1980s, media interest in the then-Lady Diana Spencer brought a brief commercial revival of the look in women's and unisex fashion both in Europe and North America, particularly among the "town and country", "New Romantic", and "preppie" sets. However, by 1984 the style had waned as more top-heavy styles with snug pants rendered the style obsolete.
, tobi trousers
, similar to knickerbokers, are worn by construction workers, and their popular length has significantly increased over time, lowering the baggy part down the bottom of the leg like plus-fours and plus-sixes, and sometimes to the feet like trousers.
Knickerbockers are often worn in baseball as pants, a custom that has been practiced even since long pants became widely used in the U.S. The traditional knickerbockers of old were more like pants that had been folded back with long socks.
, Ireland
and some Commonwealth
nations, the term knickers for women's undergarment
s owes its origin to Dickens
' illustrator, George Cruikshank
, who did the illustrations for Washington Irving's droll History of New York when it was published in London. He showed the old-time Knickerbockers in their loose Dutch breeches, and by 1859, short loose ladies undergarments, a kind of abbreviated version of pantalettes
or pantaloons
, were knickers in England.
Breeches
Breeches are an item of clothing covering the body from the waist down, with separate coverings for each leg, usually stopping just below the knee, though in some cases reaching to the ankles...
or baggy-kneed trousers
Trousers
Trousers are an item of clothing worn on the lower part of the body from the waist to the ankles, covering both legs separately...
particularly popular in the early twentieth century USA. Golf
Golf
Golf is a precision club and ball sport, in which competing players use many types of clubs to hit balls into a series of holes on a golf course using the fewest number of strokes....
ers' plus twos and plus fours were breeches
Breeches
Breeches are an item of clothing covering the body from the waist down, with separate coverings for each leg, usually stopping just below the knee, though in some cases reaching to the ankles...
of this type. Before World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
, skiers
Skiing
Skiing is a recreational activity using skis as equipment for traveling over snow. Skis are used in conjunction with boots that connect to the ski with use of a binding....
often wore knickerbockers too, usually ankle-length.
Until after World War I, in many anglophone
Anglophone
Anglophone may refer to:*An English language-speaking person, group, or locality*English-speaking world* Anglosphere...
countries, boys customarily wore short pants in summer and knickerbockers or "knickers" (or "knee pants") in winter. At the onset of puberty, they graduated to long trousers. In that era, the transition to "long pants" was a major rite of passage. See, for example, the classic song Blues in the Night
Blues in the Night
"Blues in the Night" is a popular song which has become a pop standard and is generally considered to be part of the Great American Songbook. The music was written by Harold Arlen, the lyrics by Johnny Mercer, for a 1941 film begun with the working title Hot Nocturne, but finally released as Blues...
by Johnny Mercer
Johnny Mercer
John Herndon "Johnny" Mercer was an American lyricist, songwriter and singer. He is best known as a lyricist, but he also composed music. He was also a popular singer who recorded his own songs as well as those written by others...
: "My mammy done told me, when I was in knee-pants, my mammy done told me, son...".
Baseball players wear a stylized form of knickerbockers, although the pants have become less baggy in recent decades and some modern ballplayers opt to pull the trousers close to the ankles. The white trousers worn by American football
American football
American football is a sport played between two teams of eleven with the objective of scoring points by advancing the ball into the opposing team's end zone. Known in the United States simply as football, it may also be referred to informally as gridiron football. The ball can be advanced by...
officials
Official (American football)
In American football, an official is a person who has responsibility in enforcing the rules and maintaining the order of the game.During professional and college football games, seven officials operate on the field...
are knickerbockers, and while they have become less baggy, they are still worn ending shortly below the knee. In recent years, the NFL has equipped its officials with long trousers rather than knickers in cold weather.
History
The name "Knickerbocker" first acquired meaning with Washington IrvingWashington Irving
Washington Irving was an American author, essayist, biographer and historian of the early 19th century. He was best known for his short stories "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" and "Rip Van Winkle", both of which appear in his book The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. His historical works...
's History of New York, which featured the fictional author
Fictional character
A character is the representation of a person in a narrative work of art . Derived from the ancient Greek word kharaktêr , the earliest use in English, in this sense, dates from the Restoration, although it became widely used after its appearance in Tom Jones in 1749. From this, the sense of...
Diedrich Knickerbocker, an old-fashioned Dutch New Yorker in Irving's satire of chatty and officious local history. In fact, Washington Irving had a real friend named Herman Knickerbocker
Herman Knickerbocker
Herman Knickerbocker was a United States Representative from New York. Born in Albany, he completed preparatory studies, studied law, was admitted to the bar in 1803 and commenced practice in Albany...
(1779–1855), whose name he borrowed. Herman Knickerbocker, in turn, was of the upstate Knickerbocker clan, which descended from a single immigrant ancestor, Harmen Jansen van Wijhe Knickerbocker
Harmen Jansen Knickerbocker
Harmen Jansen van Wijhe Knickerbacker was a Dutch colonist in New Netherland .He was a native of the village of Zaltbommel, Netherlands. The Wijhe portion of the name represents an earlier familial origin...
. Jansen van Wijhe invented the name upon arriving in New Amsterdam
New Amsterdam
New Amsterdam was a 17th-century Dutch colonial settlement that served as the capital of New Netherland. It later became New York City....
and signed a document with a variant of it in 1682. After Irving's History, by 1831, "Knickerbocker" had become a local bye-word for an imagined old Dutch-descended New York aristocracy, their old-fashioned ways, their long-stemmed pipes, and knee-breeches
Breeches
Breeches are an item of clothing covering the body from the waist down, with separate coverings for each leg, usually stopping just below the knee, though in some cases reaching to the ankles...
long after the fashion had turned to trousers. (Such cultural heritage sprang almost entirely from Irving's imagination and became a well-known example of an invented tradition.) "Knickerbocker" became a byword for a New York patrician, comparable to a "Boston Brahmin
Boston Brahmin
Boston Brahmins are wealthy Yankee families characterized by a highly discreet and inconspicuous life style. Based in and around Boston, they form an integral part of the historic core of the East Coast establishment...
".
Thus the "New York Knickerbockers
New York Knickerbockers
The New York Knickerbockers were one of the first organized baseball teams which played under a set of rules similar to the game today. The team was founded by Alexander Cartwright, considered one of the original developers of modern baseball....
" were an amateur social and athletic club organized by Alexander Cartwright on Manhattan's (Lower) East Side in 1842, largely to play "base ball" according to written rules, the first organized team in baseball history; on June 19, 1846 the New York Knickerbockers played the first game of "base ball" organized under those rules, in Hoboken, New Jersey
Hoboken, New Jersey
Hoboken is a city in Hudson County, New Jersey, United States. As of the 2010 United States Census, the city's population was 50,005. The city is part of the New York metropolitan area and contains Hoboken Terminal, a major transportation hub for the region...
, and were trounced 23 - 1. The Knickerbocker name stayed with the team even after it moved its base of operations to Elysian Fields at Hoboken, N.J. in 1846. The baseball link may have prompted Casey Stengel
Casey Stengel
Charles Dillon "Casey" Stengel , nicknamed "The Old Perfessor", was an American Major League Baseball outfielder and manager. He was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in ....
to joyously exclaim, "It's great to be back as the manager of the Knickerbockers!" when he was named pilot of the newborn New York Mets
New York Mets
The New York Mets are a professional baseball team based in the borough of Queens in New York City, New York. They belong to Major League Baseball's National League East Division. One of baseball's first expansion teams, the Mets were founded in 1962 to replace New York's departed National League...
in 1961.
Hence also the locally-brewed "Knickerbocker Beer" brewed by Jacob Ruppert, the first sponsors of the tv show tonight!
The Tonight Show
The Tonight Show is an American late-night talk show that has aired on NBC since 1954. It is the longest currently running regularly scheduled entertainment program in the United States, and the third longest-running show on NBC, after Meet the Press and Today.The Tonight Show has been hosted by...
; hence the gossip columnist "Cholly Knickerbocker", the pen name of Igor Cassini
Igor Cassini
Igor Cassini was an American syndicated gossip columnist for the Hearst newspaper chain. He was the second journalist to write the Cholly Knickerbocker column.-Career:...
; hence the extremely high-toned Knickerbocker Club
Knickerbocker Club
The Knickerbocker Club , is a gentlemen's club in New York City founded in 1871. Its current location, a neo-Georgian structure at 2 East 62nd Street, was commissioned in 1913. It was designed by William Adams Delano and Chester Holmes Aldrich...
(still in a neo-Georgian mansion on Fifth Avenue at 62nd Street, which was founded in 1871 when some members of the Union Club became concerned that admission policies weren't strict enough); and hence the New York Knicks
New York Knicks
The New York Knickerbockers, prominently known as the Knicks, are a professional basketball team based in New York City. They are part of the Atlantic Division of the Eastern Conference in the National Basketball Association...
, whose corporate name is the "New York Knickerbockers."
The Knickerbocker name was an integral part of the New York scene when the Basketball Association of America
Basketball Association of America
The Basketball Association of America was a professional basketball league in North America, founded in 1946. The league merged with the National Basketball League in 1949, forming the National Basketball Association ...
granted a charter franchise to the city in the summer of 1946. As can best be determined, the final decision to call the team the "Knickerbockers" was made by the club's founder, Ned Irish
Ned Irish
Edward S. "Ned" Irish was a basketball promoter and one of the key figures in popularizing professional basketball. He was the president of the New York Knicks from 1946 to 1974...
. The team is now generally referred to as the Knicks.
Use in sporting endeavors
Knickerbockers have been popular in other sporting endeavors, particularly golf, rock climbing, cross-country skiing, and bicycling.Indeed, in cycling they were standard attire for nearly a hundred years, with the majority of archival photos of cyclists in the era before World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
showing men wearing knickerbockers tucked into long socks. They remained fairly popular in Britain (where they were called "breeks" or "trews") in the years between World War I and World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
, but eventually were eclipsed in popularity by racing tights, even among the vast majority of cyclists who never raced. Invariably referred to as "knickers" in the US, where the British definition of that term is unknown, they lived on as a just-past-the-knee variant of racing tights reserved for colder-weather riding.
During the early 1980s, media interest in the then-Lady Diana Spencer brought a brief commercial revival of the look in women's and unisex fashion both in Europe and North America, particularly among the "town and country", "New Romantic", and "preppie" sets. However, by 1984 the style had waned as more top-heavy styles with snug pants rendered the style obsolete.
In Japan
In JapanJapan
Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
, tobi trousers
Tobi trousers
Tobi trousers or tobi pants are a type of baggy pants used as a common uniform of tobi shokunin, construction workers in Japan who work on high places...
, similar to knickerbokers, are worn by construction workers, and their popular length has significantly increased over time, lowering the baggy part down the bottom of the leg like plus-fours and plus-sixes, and sometimes to the feet like trousers.
Knickerbockers are often worn in baseball as pants, a custom that has been practiced even since long pants became widely used in the U.S. The traditional knickerbockers of old were more like pants that had been folded back with long socks.
Knickers
In the United KingdomUnited Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
, Ireland
Ireland
Ireland is an island to the northwest of continental Europe. It is the third-largest island in Europe and the twentieth-largest island on Earth...
and some Commonwealth
Commonwealth of Nations
The Commonwealth of Nations, normally referred to as the Commonwealth and formerly known as the British Commonwealth, is an intergovernmental organisation of fifty-four independent member states...
nations, the term knickers for women's undergarment
Undergarment
Undergarments or underwear are clothes worn under other clothes, often next to the skin. They keep outer garments from being soiled by bodily secretions and discharges, shape the body, and provide support for parts of it. In cold weather, long underwear is sometimes worn to provide additional...
s owes its origin to Dickens
Charles Dickens
Charles John Huffam Dickens was an English novelist, generally considered the greatest of the Victorian period. Dickens enjoyed a wider popularity and fame than had any previous author during his lifetime, and he remains popular, having been responsible for some of English literature's most iconic...
' illustrator, George Cruikshank
George Cruikshank
George Cruikshank was a British caricaturist and book illustrator, praised as the "modern Hogarth" during his life. His book illustrations for his friend Charles Dickens, and many other authors, reached an international audience.-Early life:Cruikshank was born in London...
, who did the illustrations for Washington Irving's droll History of New York when it was published in London. He showed the old-time Knickerbockers in their loose Dutch breeches, and by 1859, short loose ladies undergarments, a kind of abbreviated version of pantalettes
Pantalettes
Pantalettes are undergarments covering the legs worn by women, girls, and very young boys in the early- to mid-nineteenth century....
or pantaloons
Underpants
-Boxer shorts:Boxer shorts, or simply boxers, have an elasticated waistband that is at or near the wearer's waist, while the leg sections are fairly loose and extend to the mid-thigh. There is usually a fly, either with or without buttons...
, were knickers in England.
See also
- BreechesBreechesBreeches are an item of clothing covering the body from the waist down, with separate coverings for each leg, usually stopping just below the knee, though in some cases reaching to the ankles...
- Plus foursPlus foursPlus fours are breeches or trousers that extend 4 inches below the knee...
- BloomersBloomers (clothing)Bloomers is a word which has been applied to several types of divided women's garments for the lower body at various times.-Fashion bloomers :...
- Knickerbocracy
External links
- pattern
- On-line Etymology Dictionary
- "Knickerbocker: Origins of the name": some New York colonial genealogy
- Tim Wiles, "Letters in the Dirt:" no. 14
- "Japanese Construction Worker Fashion"
- Knickers From the Historical Boys' Clothing website