The History Bit

‍The corridors of fashion regularly echo the fact that Gabrielle Coco Chanel made wide-leg trousers and beach PJs popular in the 1920s. This was most revolutionary at the time considering the restrictive social norms and dress etiquette women experienced globally, including in the West. Allegedly, Gabriella noted that wide-leg trousers made boarding gondolas in Venice and travel in high-heat chic.

Let’s spin the globe and get other perspectives: In the 1920s in China the nobility also had a preference for wearing wide-leg silk pants that had a flattering form but modestly disguised the specifics of a woman’s figure. Meanwhile, in Tbilisi, Georgia (then part of the Russian Empire), one Princess Irene Galitzine was officially credited with the invention of ‘palazzo pajamas’. Some of Galitzine’s palazzo collections are preserved in many notable museums, from The Met in NYC to the V&A in London, and the Dress Museum in St. Petersburg. Princess Galitzine dressed the likes of Soraya Esfandiary-Bakhtiary (ثریا اسفندیاری بختیاری,), Queen Paola of Belgium, Queen Anne-Marie of Greece, Greta Garbo, and Audrey Hepburn, to name but a few special women.

World War Two brought with it fabric/cloth rationing, and a need for conservative and practical garments. So the beloved palazzo was a lavish silhouette of irrelevance for many for the 1940s and much of the 1950s.

Once the clouds of dark decades dispersed, a Vogue Editor-in-Chief with a penchant for deep red office walls, called Diana Vreeland, coined the term ‘palazzo trousers’. At this point in fashion history, the palazzo pant garment had many reasons for existing. The fluidity of the ballooning fabric that cascades down from a woman’s waist-line to her toes means that a palazzo pant can be mistaken, by the undiscerning eye, for a skirt or dress. This was especially useful in the 1960s when many high-end restaurants followed a strict dress code where women needed to wear only gowns or skirts. However, sartorial-savvy women could enter the premises via the blurred lines the palazzo trouser provided. Emilio Pucci embraced the palazzo pant across its collections throughout the ’60s. 

Fast forward to the mid-1980s and it was Donna Karan and Giorgio Armani making the power suit especially feminine with fluid trouser shapes. Today, the palazzo is a thing. And it will be everlasting. Hence our micro PhD course.

The D1 How to Wear It Guide

‍The palazzo pant is best worn with a slick, fitted top or refined knitwear with acutely pointed or square-cut toe shoes. Remember, it's striding and being the lady in palazzo pants, not face planting on a gondola (because Coco was right about that too).

Written by Philippa Morgan.