"Black Velvet Toreador Pants"

Sylvia Plath wrote to her mother Aurelia Plath on December 8, 1957, “I am sitting so cosily in my lovely black velvet toreador pants which I think are my favorite garment, my knee socks under them, and my little leopard slippers on, very warm and informal.” Sylvia’s velvet pants were leisure wear, a new post-war category of clothing a step up from pajamas. They might, if one was daring, be worn before guests and friends.

A most adaptable 1950s women’s leisure style, the toreador pant vanquished 1940s pleated trousers and struck Bermuda shorts dumb. Wearing skirts in public and at home as girls and women had to, Sylvia wore jeans when camping and in the countryside and as a housewife in London. Jeans then were work wear, or for roughing it. The fit was boxy and hems often worn rolled. The fitted toreador pant in finer fabric was for fun and the sass of showing off a figure.

Sylvia in jeans, Wyoming, 1959

On December 21, 1962, after goosey old ladies sent Sylvia money to buy new clothes, Sylvia wrote her mother from London that she bought along with new skirts and tops “black fake-fur toreador pants.” Certainly those were for leisure, the “fur” a bit exotic like the “tiger pants” that in Sylvia’s poem “Lesbos” were garb for a cheap adulteress.

Only five days later, December 26, Sylvia wanted still more toreador pants, this time a set, surely hoping a guest or guests might see and admire her in it. “Dear [Aunt] Dottie sent a $20 bill,” she wrote her mother, “& I shall treat myself to a green velvet set of Oriental toreador pants & top . . .”

Rather than imagine Sylvia’s toreador pants (I know of no photos), I sought photographic examples. 

 

In 1953, when the look was new, what made Marilyn Monroe’s velvet pants “toreador” was a high waist, close fit, flat front, and tapered leg. The sash too is “toreador.”

Monroe with designer William Travilla, 1953

Toreadors cropped at the ankle, called “cigarette pants,” were popular U.S. 1950s and 1960s casual wear, revived every few decades ever since. In this illustration they are worn as originally intended with bullfighters’ espadrilles. (photo from Etsy.com):

Choice of 12 colors, $64 made to order: https://tinyurl.com/msccn456

“Toreador” came to allude to length as well as fit. Below, see a black velvet calf-length “toreador” pant ensemble, not formal but made cocktail-party respectable with pearls, on a 1957 limited-edition Madame Alexander doll. “Evening pants” were then a new concept, limited to early-evening hours.

 

Here is a 1960s fake-fur for anyone inclined to sit on a rock off Cornwall and comb their hair:

Tiger pants plus!