Bowyangs on Peak Oil Company pants

I recently discovered bowyangs. Shearers in Australia still use them, and moccasins.

Here’s a video of how Peak Oil Company’s wool trousers hold bowyangs.

Bowyangs are straps to hold pants up at the knee. They help prevent the thighs dragging on the pants, stressing the fabric and pulling on the waist band. If the pants are loosely fitted enough, like trousers, the bowyangs will bellow the fabric around the knee and give a full range of movement without restriction from the fabric. It’s like what I’ve been doing with the anoraks, at the elbow and shoulders.

Sundowner Postcard 1904, depicting a swagman wearing boyangs.

We lost our way with clothing…

Turns out almost everyone working in the bush wore bowyangs in Australia, right up to about the 1950s. Similar in other countries too. Go back far enough and you find Puttees, Knickerbockers, Breeches, and really baggy pants in the medieval periods doing the same thing. Look across Asia and the Middle East, same again. Come forward to today, tight, fitted, low rise, elastic jeans and variations on the same silliness.

And just like that I have a big gush of validation. I’ve been trying to work out an efficient, baggy, high rise trouser design with a way to strap in the lower leg. I didn’t know about bowyangs, but I knew about the problem I was trying to solve. Now the way is clear, I know what I need to do.

Just another example of the old ways being good ways, changing our new ways.