who wears the pants?

flares

Though synonymous with flower-power hippies and 1970s musos, flares come from a rather ungroovy source: the US and UK militaries. Early-19th-century American sailors first adopted the bell-bottom shape, perhaps because they were easier to roll up over their knees while working on wet decks (or maybe sailors just thought they looked awesome). In the 1960s, naval uniforms wound up in British military surplus stores, where they were spotted by thrifty youngsters looking for cheap duds. Most people thought flares were for screwball youths and radicals until the mid-’60s, when they appeared on the gams of charismatic celebs like Jimi Hendrix, Mick Jagger