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Sideshow

Just say no to pants pushers!

Would-be fashionistas are about to be thrown under the bus again. The gaucho? Ouch-o.

By SHARON GINK
Published October 9, 2005

It's bad enough that the people who pick fashion trends pushed one kind of ugly pants on women this year - Bermuda shorts - and many women blindly wore them.

Now, for fall they are pushing a second kind - the very-wide-leg, just-below-the-knee pants known as gauchos - and many women again are Wearing While Brainwashed.

It's enough to bring out our authority-figure voice to say, "If your friends told you to jump off a cliff, would you do that, too?"

Why would anyone choose to wear something that flatters no one's shape and makes everyone look like a character at a theme park?

LET'S HEAD TO THE PAMPAS! Gauchos first appeared in the late 1960s with other Latin-inspired pieces, such as bolero jackets, in one of fashion's "everything goes" phases.

They are mutations of the pants worn by South American cowboys known as gauchos, and back in the '60s, they were promoted as another radical advancement in clothing that freed women from outdated societal expectations.

Just goes to show how many bad ideas there were in the '60s.

Gauchos were hot and not a few more times until the mid '70s, and then, because sometimes fashion does do the right thing, they disappeared.

IT'S LIKE A LAB EXPERIMENT: They returned this year out of nowhere. The only possible explanation is that the trendsetters decided to make this The Year of Ugly Pants to see if the other residents of fashionistaworld would buy into it.

They did.

Purveyors from high-end designers to Target produced gauchos. The PR machine sold them.

"They're a fresh silhouette," T.J. Maxx national fashion spokeswoman Laura McDowell told Sideshow, "because . . . gauchos haven't been around in ages."

And fashion forecasts around the country called them hip, hot and happening. (We didn't. We won't be a party to fashion crimes.)

IF FAMOUS PEOPLE WEAR THEM, THEY MUST BE OKAY . . . RIGHT? Enough celebrities started wearing gauchos that one celebrity-watching Web site recently made the pants its hot trend pick.

It ran a few pictures of celebs wearing them. When a pair of pants makes Desperate Housewives' > Eva Longoria look chunky, there should be a national recall.

AND IT WILL GET UGLIER: As the spring shows in Paris concluded last week, Chanel's Karl Lagerfeld sent Bermuda shorts down the runway again. Thankfully, one pair came with a billowy coverup.

Sharon Fink can be reached at 727 893-8525 or fink@sptimes.com

[Last modified October 9, 2005, 01:08:18]