Trousers that flared extremely wide at the bottom to completely cover shoes. I never knew the difference between these and bell-bottoms. Does anyone know? The famous Loon pants seemed to be in the same category too, although these were generally tight fitting straight cut trousers that flared from the knee in a sharper angled cut.
All trousers in the seventies were flared. The word “flares” was really just a generic name given to any trousers that “flared” at the bottom, and in the seventies that was all of them! All trousers were much wider at the foot end of the leg and featured a larger bottom area of material at the base of the trousers.
Some of the flares would start leaving the surface of the leg about the area of the knee, and would flare out, so finally at the bottom they would flap around as you walked. I remember wearing my heavy denim flares, and you really could hear me coming, as it sometimes sounded like a muffled clapping sound as the material bounced and hit itself during the walking process.
The competition at school was to see who could get their parents to buy the most wide flared trousers. It was so ridiculous when you look back on it now, but my goodness we must have looked like strange animals when trying to get through doors to the classrooms.
These ones have the nice wide waistband and wide flares so you could hide the really high-heeled platforms so no one knew how tall, (or how short) you really were.
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