The Invention of the Pant Leg

The invention of the pant leg* in Florence in 1473 was a milestone for menswear, though little is known of the tailors, legs and circumstances behind this garment's humble origins. (*UK residents please convert "pant" to "trouser" for the correct fit.)

The following account is loosely based on something a local tour guide once told me as he pushed his way to the front of the queue in an Ufizzi pissoir, after sticking me with the bill for 37 lattés he’d bought for a busload of German soccer fans he’d left for dead along the Appian Way.

Giuseppe Giordano Pantalone, credited with the first patent for a pant leg, was not originally a tailor by trade. His father, a Genovese upskirt videographer, had made his fortune after stealing the recipe for couscous from the Berbers of North Africa, taking advantage when they were temporarily weakened by tsetse fly sickness, beri beri, invasions by Mau-Maus, and relentless reduplication.

Thereafter dubbed Pantalone the Wily, he made the most of his gains. Finding grains of couscous too hard to count for the purposes of keeping inventory, he shaped the durum semolina into longer strands that could be cut up by the customer after purchase. Busy housewives quickly realized they could save a step by boiling the strands uncut and keep their families busy twirling it on their forks, giving them more free time to indulge in their hobbies such as cleaning, sewing, grinding sausages, and staying pregnant.

Pantalone the Wily marketed his "spaghetti" (Italian for "tiny little spaghs") by launching one of the greatest ad campaigns of the Renaissance. With the personal endorsement of the Medici family, it was soon the rage among Italian soccer moms (i.e. all of them), who only used their leftover couscous to soak up vomit from the kitchen floor when the sawdust ran out.

The elder Pantalone grew fabulously wealthy, but it wasn't long before he ran afoul of Italy's notoriously strike-prone workforce. When Pantalone raised the price of the mini sausages sold in his warehouse's snack machines, his dockworkers and ship crews staged the Great Salami Sitdown Strike of the 1460s, which erupted into the Little Pepperoni Riot when a group of cops and scabs arrived on the scene. Fearing for his life, the elder Pantalone fled Genoa, leaving many a sore sailor behind. Although it grieved him to leave his hometown, he wrote later in his diary that in hindsight it was for the best, since the Genovese chicks were all crazy for Christopher Columbus anyway, and he couldn’t even get laid there if he were a solid gold brick (“uno mattone dell'oro solido”).

The elder Pantalone eventually settled in Florence, hoping to corner the Tuscan durum market and strengthen relations with his southern Italian clients. Rome was also an important market for spaghetti, since Pope Innocent IX (known as Innocent the Guilty) had used it to strangle his dissenting cardinals and became known as the Pasta Pope. The Church became one of the elder Pantalone's biggest customers, especially when it realized that spaghetti could also be eaten.

Once settled in Florence, the elder Pantalone married the daughter of a middle-class Florentine who owned Europe's first hairdressing salon chain. She soon gave birth to little Giuseppe and his nine brothers and sisters, all in one sitting according to custom.

As the youngest child of a small family (by Italian Renaissance standards), Pantalone was indulged by his parents, who shipped him off to the cheapest boarding school they could find. Unfortunately the school uniforms consisted of the standard woolen hose, which itched Pantalone like a case of full-body herpes. Thanks in part to the distraction of constantly having to scratch, he quickly tired of the Latin grammar and ruler slaps that made up his formal education, and decided to take a year off to travel Europe, until someone reminded him that he was already there.

After dropping school he apprenticed in various trades such as plumbing, cement mixing, and soothsaying, but they failed to capture his interest, his mind much too given to wandering to master a single craft. The local trade guilds soon grew tired of his attitude, and banned him from all apprenticeships within the city limits in order to prevent him from learning all of their secret handshakes.

It was at this low ebb of his life that Pantalone met the great Leonardo Da Vinci while loitering outside the Florentine town hall. Da Vinci bummed a smoke off Pantalone and the two made small talk, soon realizing that they had something in common: they were both there to pick up their unemployment checks. Da Vinci showed Pantalone where to get in line, and a bond was formed between them.

Filled with gratitude, Pantalone invited Da Vinci to his apartment, promising to show him some of his card tricks. That very evening Da Vinci knocked on the door, and after Pantalone failed three times to guess his card, Da Vinci suggested they just put on some TV and veg out.

Da Vinci, a born complainer and the biggest crybaby of the Italian Renaissance, started to moan about how his rich yet idle patrons refused to finance his groundbreaking inventions, such as the Flying Latrine and the Bottomless Diaper. He was also resentful of them for failing to appreciate his "Da Vinci Coder Ring", just because cereal boxes had not been invented yet. His maniacal ranting had a profound effect on Pantalone, though not profound enough to get him to loan Da Vinci a fiver. Pantalone was impressed, however, when Da Vinci drew him an anatomical sketch illustrating the proper way for a man to do jumping jacks in the nude. A vague idea began to form in Pantalone's mind, but he couldn't express it. He scratched at his woolly hose.

“Damn these itchy knickers,” he muttered.

Overhearing, Da Vinci immediately launched into a tirade about his own hosiery, complaining that it was impossible to find good work clothes in the late 15th century. With a series of wild hand gestures, he illustrated to Pantalone how his wool hose got terribly dirty in the workshop, and that his dry-cleaning bills were bleeding him dry (dry cleaning was prohibitively expensive during the Renaissance, especially if you needed it done by Tuesday). Unfortunately, fashion design was never Da Vinci’s forte, which is why he always sketched everyone nude. He was at the mercy of his own tailors, he said, who weren’t at all interested in meeting the requirements of a fledgling Renaissance man.

“Stitch me something practical,” he begged them. “These stupid hose are way too slimming. This is the Renaissance, for chrissakes. You should see all the fat ladies that horn-dog pope had painted on his bedroom ceiling!” But they didn’t listen.

He would plead with them some more. "These damn hose itch something fierce. Plus, if I crack a fatty, everyone can see it." But they continued to didn’t listen.

The tailors would inevitably shake their heads and offer the same response. "Be sensible, Leo. It is the fashion for a gentleman to wear hose. Is est quis is est."

Da Vinci, who remained inconvinci (as the Paduans say), related to Pantalone how he had scorned the tailors for their refusal to innovate, but despite his entreaties, the problem remained.

Right then Pantalone had a flash of inspiration, probably caused by a syphilitic Parmesan cheese he’d bought from a dealer selling knockoffs in the market square. He told Da Vinci that if he were to return sober in a fortnight, his problem would be solved.

Da Vinci left in a good mood (for Pantalone had loaned him the fiver after all), and Pantalone immediately set to work. He bought textiles from all over Europe, hired seamstresses, and rented the apartment above him to use as a studio. Working from Da Vinci’s plans, he built a replica of Da Vinci's workshop to use as a testing facility for his design, but in the process he accidentally invented the wind tunnel, combine harvester, and CAT scanner through trial and error. Then with the jumping-jacks sketch tacked up on the wall for inspiration, Pantalone set to work on a replacement for hose.

He first had to decide on a suitable fabric, and wool was out of the question. Silk was far too expensive and delicate (plus a bit fruity). Spandex was comfortable on the skin, but too tight. Then Pantalone remembered his father telling the family about the Great Salami Sitdown Strike, and how the sailors thereafter started wearing lengths of denim sailcloth to protect against attack from behind. He took a bolt of denim from his shelf and inspected it: it was a comfortable yet durable cloth that could be easily washed at home, so the choice was obvious. He’d found his material, but still needed a design.

After several grueling hours at the drafting table, Pantalone finally found his favourite pencil. From that moment he sketched day and night, even though he was out of candles. While sketching in the dark he came up with designs for the synchrotron and X-ray machine, but had no idea what they were and they ended up in his recycling bin, only to be rediscovered years later by Albert Einstein and the Marie Curie.

He decided that the most practical design would be one where two pieces of cloth were sewn together to cover both legs from the waist to the ground, allowing room for movement inside. He designed an aperture in the front that opened using a revolutionary zipper, which that would allow the wearer to undo the garment quickly and relieve himself without having to undress. Knowing that Da Vinci would want to have his other tools handy, he put loops around the waist of the garment, so that hammers and chisels could be hung there and kept within reach. He also added deep pockets on either side for keeping smaller objects such as nails, pins, bits of string, poker chips and loose change. And so, the first pant leg was born; Pantalone rather immodestly dubbed the new garment the "Pantalone," but everyone soon referred to them as "pants" and the inventor lost all royalties and subsidiary rights.

After a rigorous bout of testing in the mock workshop that resulted in several pairs being soiled beyond recognition, Pantalone realized that some sort of undergarment would have to be developed and tested for wearing beneath the pants, and chose a light cotton for the material. He thus became the inventor of y-front briefs, which served as a buffer against stains from the back-end, sparing a gentleman the embarrassment of having to explain them to the cleaning lady. They were also designed to hold the man candies snugly front and center, keeping them from dangling down either leg of the pants, which could result in dribbles and humiliating piss-dots.

Pantalone presented this new garment to Da Vinci exactly two weeks to the day after their last meeting. Da Vinci tried them on but they were too big around the waist, and when he squatted down to test them, the crack of his behind was clearly visible to Pantalone, who laughed in spite of himself. Indignant, Da Vinci glared at Pantalone and started to remove the pants, but the latter came up with a solution on the spot: he took a strip of leather, attached a buckle to one end, and threaded it through the loops around Da Vinci's waist, thus tightening the pants over his hips and preventing them from falling down.

Da Vinci now thought the pants were Da Bomba. He was pleased to note that the new garment allowed freedom of movement and protected his legs at the same time. He was especially keen on the innovation of the zipper fly, and remarked that he would sometimes labour in his workshop until he pissed himself, since he was reluctant to leave his important anti-gravity and perpetual motion machine projects in order to satisfy the demands of something as lowly as a bladder.

Impressed with the pants, Da Vinci recommended Pantalone to his buddy the Duke of Padua, who offered him a job. In the duke's court Pantalone served as technical advisor in all practical matters, bearing the title of Chamberlain of the Waist-Down.

Although his new position afforded him many opportunities, Pantalone failed to produce any new innovations. Some speculate that his cushy new job caused him to lose the passionate spark of desperation that motivated him. Others claim Pantalone was nothing more than a one-hit wonder, even suggesting that Da Vinci had been the real inventor of pants but let Pantalone take credit because he didn’t want to be known as “that pants guy”. Either way, Pantalone was jailed by the duke after just two months on the job for leaving his dirty undercrackers lying around the castle.

Despite the ignoble fate of the namesake of the pant leg, the citizens of Florence put up a memorial plaque over the door of his former residence. Though the house and plaque were bulldozed to make room for the Enlightenment, and his name only survives in abbreviated form, Pantalone is still resented by the descendants of Da Vinci's stubborn tailors. To this day, they resist all innovation in menswear, and never listen to anything their customers want done with their pants, preferring instead to tailor them in the ugliest fashion possible: baggy, high up at the hips, buckled several times at the ankle, and a foot wide at the bottom with great ugly cuffs sewed on with nylon thread. Despite these drawbacks, the pant leg has so thoroughly outpaced its rivals that hose are now worn only by men on ballet stages or in seedy motel rooms.