Capri: Pants named after an Italian island
Who doesn’t love a casual pair of trousers with a bottom hem that reaches below the knee but stays just above the ankle? Famous as capri, these bottoms tick all the boxes for comfort and style! These summery pants are any young girl’s go-to attire. That said, do you know who came up with your favourite kind of pants? Here’s the whole capri story for you.
World thanks Sonja de Lennart for capris
Born in 1920 at Breslau in the then Prussia, a woman named Sonja de Lennart was interested in designing and making her own clothes since her girlhood. However, as fate would have it, she was barred from making her own career and was married off to an Italian trainee soldier at the young age of 19, just when the world was on the verge of World War II. But this isn’t where Sonja’s hardships end. Her husband was soon called to the war and she was left behind all alone with her three-year old daughter.
One fine day, while travelling across the country, Lennart reached the shores of Italian island city Capri, a popular holiday destination. There, while walking on the beach in her self-made pants, Lennart’s feet got wet. At this moment she realised that she needed to make her pants beach-ready, meaning they needed to be both shorter and tighter.
This mundane incident soon led to the creation of history. In an era when women were prohibited from wearing trousers in ‘respectable’ circles and could even be arrested for donning men’s clothes, she dared to make cropped, close-fitted trousers that soon went on to become a fashion statement.
But Lennart wasn’t satisfied with one or two samples, she wanted to mass-produce the garment and launch her own line of women’s clothing. Here, something else stood as an obstacle. It was the end of the war and things were intense all around. In fact, a situation arose wherein she and her baby girl had to flee Russian troops advancing towards them. Guess where they ended up? Far from Capri, in a place called Bavaria.
Understanding the name ‘capri’
In 1945, when Lennart finally managed to set off her own women’s clothing line, she needed a name for both her brand as well as her first collection. Guess what she chose? Capri! The reason was fairly simple and straightforward. Capri for her was a place that symbolised peace, freedom and lost good times that she longed for. It was also the island that inspired her to become a fashion designer. Interestingly, capri also refers to a colour that’s a deep shade of sky blue (somewhere in between cyan and azure). Lennart had once said that the first capri pant she ever made was after the colour of the sea along the horizon of Blue Grotto, a region around the Capri island.
What’s interesting, however is that, it wasn’t during Lennart’s time that capri pants reached their peak of popularity. It was rather during the late 1960s in the hands of two Italian fashion designers, Emilio Pucci and Alessandro Ruocco.
Yet, one thing is for sure. If not for Lennart, women wouldn’t have got the chance to don pants and how! Capri pants were indeed a revelation where women got to transition from typically wide and rather masculine pants to the three-quartered length, side slit, tight-fitted stylish trousers that’s has ever since been a classic in women’s fashion.