Where do we go from Leggings?

A few weeks ago, I found myself walking through Hyde Park with an old friend. We were reminiscing about university, and about some time we had more recently spent together at a social event. As we discussed the merits of this event, a female jogger ran past us both, sporting a pair of leggings. This instantly silenced the two of us. It then almost immediately sparked a new, entirely different conversational topic. However, before I begin on the re-telling of this topic, let me say this: no rude, crude or obscene comments were made during this conversation. In fact, whilst the jogger was in sight, not much was actually said at all. Nevertheless, once she had passed us, it set off an observation my friend had clearly been thinking about for a long time, and wanted to verbalise and share with me.

He started by informing me that a little over one hundred years ago - around the time Queen Victoria was occupying the throne - allowing your ankles to be displayed in public was considered to be the height of scandal. I have since checked this information and all I can say is thank god we are not Victorian. I thanked him for the potentially useful pub quiz tip-bit, but asked him why he was thinking about Victorian fashion and trends. He answered by pointing to yet more joggers, and answered clearly and simply that it was because of leggings.

Naturally, I didn’t understand.

Fortunately, he was willing to elaborate to clarify his position. Firstly, he enlightened me as to his mixed feeling about leggings. He liked them, because they could be quite revealing. However, he disliked them for exactly that same reason. He mused that given the geographical location and the dress restrictions imposed by the weather, he felt that leggings were about as close to being naked as anyone could really come, whilst remaining publicly ‘decent’. He explained this by saying that, whilst more material was involved in an item of clothing such as leggings as opposed to something like shorts, they were a tad tighter and as such left almost nothing to imagination. Hard to disagree with that really; he had made a valid point.

Now, it may seem that we were just watching runners of the female variety, and engaging in a bit crumpetering. But, as you can see, my friend was really just discussing the pros and cons of leggings. And that’s hardly a crime now, is it.

The conversation then changed direction. He began to talk about time travel.  He mused that if you were to go back in time by, for instance, twenty years, the changes in our physical environment between now and then would not have been that big. Okay, so our cars may have gotten quicker since then, our buildings a little taller, and mobile phones no longer need to be carried around in a rucksack. But really, not a lot has altered.

Subsequently, he went on to say that if you could invent a device that could somehow shoot you into the future (we will, at this point, for the sake of argument call the device a "time machine"), then probably the biggest differences would come from the people themselves.  This, to me, seemed like a sensible conclusion. He reasoned that, if you were to go into the future, you would have to mentally prepare yourself for the technological advances before you went. For example in Victorian times trains were a big part of society. If a Victorian were to suddenly find themselves here, in 2012, then the sight of a car would no doubt be a little alarming, however, I doubt the cocept would be unfathomable.

Which led him to his final thought.
 "…Where do we go from leggings?"
 "I don’t know," I replied.
 "Neither do I," he continued. "Neither do I."

Silence consumed the both of us, as we continued to ponder what could possibly follow leggings.
 "Maybe spray-on trousers," he mused. "Or perhaps merkins."