December 10, 1904: “Women in Trousers”

In Champery, Switzerland, the Sight Causes No Comment.

It will probably be news to many advocates of feminine dress reform to hear that the women of Champery, a primitive mountain district of the Canton Valais, Switzerland, have worn trousers from time immemorial. The Champery region is in the southwestern part of the Canton Valais, the village of Champery itself being at the foot of the Dent du Midi, well known to Lake Geneva tourists.

The men of Champery are noted for their lazy habits and beyond acting as guides to mountain climbers in the summer months they lead an absolutely idle life. The women perform all the hard labor required of a mountaineering people. It is they who pasture the cattle on the steep and often dangerous Alpine slopes, cut the timber and mow the grass. It is a usual sight to see a Champery woman, her daily toil ended, returning to the village dragging her husband on one of the wooden sleighs in general use throughout Switzerland, her lord and master all the while lazily smoking his pipe.

Under such circumstances it is not surprising that the women of Champery should have adopted the masculine attire. Their costume is of the simplest kind–a jenkin of rough dark blue material, with trousers to match, and a red foulard to protect the head.

While desperately practical, nothing more unprepossessing in the way of feminine dress could be imagined than this costume of the Champery dames and damsels. Moreover, these wives and mothers of Champery, who are accustomed to all the work generally supposed to be the lot of the sterner sex, not unnaturally seek what consolation they can in masculine comforts. Chief among these is the short briar pipe, which they all smoke and evidently enjoy as much if not more than their husbands and fathers. –New York Tribune.

Source: NYS Historic Newspapers.