“Not many revolutions can be traced to America in the Fifties,” the men’s magazine GQ noted recently,”and even fewer to the suburbs during those uptight years, but this is exactly the time and place that provided acceptability for shorts”—-Bermuda shorts, that is.
Before World War II, only children and athletes wore shorts. Men wore long pants and women wore dresses for all occaisions. But that changed in the 1950s, a time of newfound leisure for the American middle class. In the suburbs, backyard barbecues became the summertime rage—and “Bermuda shorts” became the stylishly casual uniform of choice for both men and women. Cut just above the knees, they were decidedly comfortable, yet, not too shocking for that still-modest era.
The first American to adopt the style were vacationers on the island of Bermuda, a British colony in the East Atlantic. Policemen there dressed like British soldiers in the desert: they wore knee-length khaki shorts and white knee socks. Women tourists began wearing the short pants because they couldn’t wear bathing suits: Bermuda law didn’t allow women to show their thighs on the beach. Soon their husbands were heading the cool, comfortable shorts, too. As the fashion made its way to the U.S., the khaki fabric was replaced by bold colors and plaids.
By the 1950s, Bermuda shorts gave way to more daing garb: the short shorts known as “hot pants.”