What did Jane Austen and Bill Clinton have in common?

The recent scorching weather in London has brought out some repellent pairs of trousers, particularly those baggy half-length affairs, worn by stocky, thick-calved, T-shirted young men, with shaven heads and beer bellies, who now appear to epitomise English youth. Trousers are useful, indeed indispensable garments, but sartorially the only solution to the trouser problem is to make them as inconspicuous as possible. The moment you notice trousers, critical thoughts arise. This applies to both men and women.

Trousers are popularly supposed to date from the 1790s, when they began to replace breeches or culottes, first in Paris, then in London. Revolutionary gentlemen, wishing to dissociate themselves from the aristos, adopted the baggy overall trousers of the city workmen and the peasants, the sans-culottes. They also cut their hair short, abandoned wigs and dropped anything lacy. This was not the first time politics had determined fashion, since in the 1640s Roundhead styles had enforced simplicity, though not for long.