Now & Then is an occasional series that delves into the cyclical nature of trends.
“Everything that goes around comes around,” says Pat Cleveland, the 73-year-old artist and model who personified 1970s glamour as one of Halston’s muses. “People need inspiration, and we are carried along by the fantasies of the past. … Why not try something from long ago to be inspired now?”
That something? Hot pants — those form-fitting bottoms that Cleveland helped make chic in the disco era. Even then, hot pants had a retro feel, conjuring Hollywood bathing beauties and pinup girls, only in contemporary fabrics and cuts made for nightlife. Now, designers such as Miuccia Prada for Miu Miu and Maximilian Davis for Ferragamo are resurrecting this abbreviated garment.
Stylist and influencer Jen Ceballos, 31, is a recent convert; she regularly sports hot pants on her Instagram page. She recently connected with Cleveland via Zoom to talk about the history of hot pants, the way trends morph and come back through the ages, and the allure of channeling the past.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Q: It’s crazy how ubiquitous hot pants were in the early 1970s. James Brown had a song about them. Flight attendants wore them, Jacqueline Kennedy, Elizabeth Taylor.
Cleveland: That’s great you mention James Brown, because music is in my soul, and wearing hot pants is about dancing.
But yes! It was all about hot pants. You would wear a little man’s vest with the hot pants that made it chic. Or you would wear a chubby jacket for the evening with your hot pants and tights and tall boots up to the knee. It was high fashion, but high fashion comes from the streets. I mean, at that time, Vogue was right around the corner from 42nd Street!
And you wore them with thick dancer’s tights so you never got cold, you didn’t get that miniskirt feeling. It was so practical, in a way.
Ceballos: I feel like hot pants are so much more comfortable! Sometimes when you’re sitting in a skirt, if you move your legs a certain way, someone might see something.
Cleveland: They might see paradise!
Q: Pat, do you remember your first pair of hot pants?
Cleveland: I think they were Halston [or] Stephen Burrows. Stephen’s had a wrap top that went with it; it was a beautiful print that he made to go to Brazil. And it had a simple little zipper on the side. The couture hot pants always had the zipper on the side, but Fiorucci had the zipper up the center, so girls and boys could wear them. Most of the boys at Studio 54 wore hot pants. Even basketball players wore hot pants.
Q: Did you see hot pants on the street before Halston and Burrows did them?
Cleveland: Before the West Side had a museum, you would see them at night! [The prostitutes who walked the streets in pre-gentrification New York City wore hot pants, as seen in films of the era, such as “Taxi Driver.”]
Q: Jen, when did you start wearing hot pants?
Ceballos: In high school, I wore cutoff jean shorts, kind of like Daisy Dukes, from Abercrombie & Fitch. But lately, these wool Miu Miu shorts just caught my attention, because I saw that I could wear them all year long — not just in the summer. In the winter, I wear them with tights, turtlenecks and a jacket.
Cleveland: The mod look! When you said turtleneck, I thought, “That’s so English.” Courrèges, in the 1960s, he had the white boots and the short shorts. They called them “short shorts” then.
Q: So Courrèges was doing them as part of his avant-garde Space Age look. What made them take off in the early 1970s?
Cleveland: Women’s freedom. You know, we had mini, the maxi, and then how far could you go? People wore shorts, but it went from pedal pushers to sort-of safari shorts.
Ceballos: I think that’s why they’re popular now, too, because of sexual liberation. Even when I wear my shorts out, in Palm Beach, I feel like I get so many looks, especially from older people, like I’m doing something wrong. But I love them. They make me feel sexy. And I feel comfortable in them, and it is freeing.
Q: Pat, what kinds of reactions did you get when you wore your hot pants when you were young?
Cleveland: Oh my God, you know, New York was building up, building all those glass buildings, and the workers went wild. Those men who build buildings, you can tell if you look good, because they all start doing those whistles and shouting out at you: “Hey, gorgeous, look over here!”
But in New York, anything goes, really. I grew up in an art world, and we never cared what anybody thought.
Q: Your artist mother even helped you make your clothes.
Cleveland: Yeah, she helped me sew them up, and I would sell them at the disco, at the Cheetah. I used to make miniskirts out of plastic material and ostrich feathers. I’d dance till 12 o’clock, come back through the boutique, pick up my cash and go home. I was Miss Miniskirt. That’s how I got discovered in the subway, and I got into Vogue as a designer when I was 15.
Ceballos: That’s amazing.
Q: Why do you think the look is having a comeback?
Cleveland: Well, I know the designer from Ferragamo. I was just at dinner with him in Florence. And he’s young, so he probably saw his mom wearing them. You know, these designers always imitate their mothers or their grandmothers.
Ceballos: It’s true. There’s a combination of history and wanting to evolve it. Because I feel like hot pants were mostly used for clubbing back in the day. And now I feel like they’re more chic and elegant. There are so many more materials and textiles that are used now.
Cleveland: Well, we wore satin hot pants for evening. Even wedding dresses would have the skirt that tied in the front, and you took it off and underneath would be a bustier and hot pants for dancing — with the big tulle skirt with the hot pants underneath and high boots. So when you went to the disco, you’d take the skirt off and throw the evening dress part away.
Ceballos: That’s cute. I would do that.
Q: How do you feel when you see trends from your youth recycled today?
Cleveland: Even though so much has been done before, it’s totally different. Because it’s a different story people are telling about being women in clothes.
I’m 73, and I’m going to put some hot pants on tomorrow!
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