Along with so many people, I have an ongoing fascination with breeches. I consider myself something of a connoisseur of Regency-era gentlemen’s nether garments, for which I blame many happy hours reading Georgette Heyer and the way Mr Beaumaris’s grandmother is surprised he can sit down in his skin-tight pantaloons.
I am a big fan of buckskin breeches with top boots. Buckskin breeches were hard-wearing and comfortable to wear, the leather stretching and moving with the gentleman wearing them, and most fashionable, adopted as they were by so many sprigs of fashion. They could also be – and often were – skin-tight,
Ian Kelly, in his biography of Beau Brummell, describes them as highly sensuous to wear. I can’t comment on that, but they certainly look rather wonderful, framing the gentleman’s thighs with top boots and cutaway coats.
And that’s before getting into – so to speak – silk knee-breeches for evening wear (see left). Both Perry and Jack in my Carnevale series spend a lot of their time modelling these in the late eighteenth century. When they’re clothed, that is. Ahem.
Moving swiftly on, before I began working on my pirate book, I was unfamiliar with the fashions of sailors in the early eighteenth century. I’ve ended up quite charmed by petticoat breeches, so named because when the man wearing them is standing still, they truly look as if he’s wearing a petticoat. They were fastened at the knee with ribbon, buttons or a garter. Of course, sailors had a particular need for clothes that didn’t impede them, with all that climbing of the rigging and so on, but in my book, as Billy is the ship’s gunner and rarely has to engage in all the other sailor-type chores, he spends some of his life in tighter knee breeches. It’s the best of both worlds.
Above: the pirate Edward Thatch (also spelled Teach), better known as Blackbeard, modelling what look to be petticoat breeches while fighting Royal Navy lieutenant Robert Maynard.
And some final Regency breeches to share with you, modelled by the rakish Duke of Arden. They may not be a completely accurate historical representation, but I think they’re rather impressive.
The Earl’s Awakening will be published by Extasy Books on 8th September.
MM romance novels 