It seemed like a good idea at the time

In the days before my scanner breathes its last (its yellow stripes are apparently terminal) I've scanned a few more images in from Pony and Riding magazines. Riding wear stayed very much the same for quite a long period in the 20th century, helped by the Pony Club's insistence on what was the correct riding attire. There were stirrings, though. One which interested me in particular was the move from the elephant ear jodphur to the fitted type we have today. (In passing, does anyone have any idea WHY the elephant ear jodphur had the elephant ear bit? Did it serve any actual purpose?)

My very first jodhs were the elephant ear type, and my next were the riding trouser, a transitional trouser in between the elephant ears and the modern fitted type. In these ads, the riding trouser doesn't look too bad at all: more fitted; it's lost the elephant ears and as it has an elastic strap is less likely to disappear up your leg leaving your skinny ankles exposed to the evil Northamptonshire wind, but I never came across any of these. My sister and I both had riding trousers, after our mother was talked into buying them by the owner of the riding stables. The next thing, she said. Everyone will have them soon, she said. Maybe if they'd been like the Edwin Drostle ones below, they would have, but my sister and I were alone with ours. Poor sister's were even less prepossessing than mine, being an unattractive dung colour. Mine were at least an alluring putty, but both pairs were shapeless sacks with elastic at the bottom.

Phillips and Piper Ltd did pantaloons - I can't imagine they sold many with that name, but I wonder if that was what we had.

I never had the next horror visited upon me (only because the riding school owner didn't have one in secondhand, otherwise it would have been mine). I can't remember ever seeing one either, but it has a peculiar charm, the riding hat with the softer, more feminine line, in tweed.

You would think that denim jodphurs were a horror only around in the 1980s (and I do have a Pony Magazine somewhere with an ad for these which I will post as soon as I find it). No - Rowes of Bond Street were selling the deni-jod in the early 1960s. They only came in regulation colours of fawn or brown, but they were denim, and their young customers insisted upon them, they said. Not for long, I suppose, as I can't find any mention of these jodhs in the mid 1960s. Having ridden in denim in an inter-jodh period, I know first hand the horror of riding in sodden, icy denim. However suited denim might be to the prairies, it's not at its best in rainy Britain.

I found an interesting correspondence in Riding Magazine, 1960. Wayne Saxton, an Australian, commented bitterly on the girliness of riding dress. The editor of Riding obviously thought this nothing but whining, simply withering poor Wayne with the observation that riding kit was worn by men before being copied by women, and each item had a "sound, practical purpose".

Mollie Helsby rode to Wayne's rescue in a subsequent issue. Her riding school had more boys than girls, and this she thought must be due to her not insisting on the correct riding kit. It's an interesting point. I wonder if boys still feel the same way? My son, when he had riding lessons, was very agin the idea of jodphurs, though quite happy to wear jodphur boots and a hat.