Stirrup pants were an item of 1980s fashion that were as mystifying as they were ubiquitous. These were leggings which had an elastic strap attached to the bottom cuff. You slipped the strap over your foot, so that it rested right in the middle of the arch of your foot.

 

The first mystery here is, these solved an issue that no one had. Has anyone ever complained about their leggings not staying down? It's just not a problem. At least not to the extent that you would need to attach elastic and secure the buggers to your feet, anyway. 

 

The second mystery is, why did we think it was okay to wear a strap of elastic around the bottoms of our feet? My feet itch and chafe just thinking about it. Can you imagine having to walk more than a block or two with your pants pulling up against the elastic straps around your feet? How maddening!

 

And in fact, the usual fate of the stirrup pant was to have the elastic wear thin or break. Want to know why? Because pants were not meant to be worn over your feet, that's why.

 

Stirrup pants gave the wearer a distinctive shape. If you stood still, it appeared that your legs were a perfect cone from your crotch to your hip. The elastic pulled the pants taut, so that your knees seemed to disappear. All curves were lost. Your legs became pure geometry. And we liked geometric shapes in the 1980s.

 

I would guess that 95% of stirrup pants were black. I don't know why. You just didn't see stirrup pants in any other color. Maybe it would spoil the perfectly clean lines of your seemingly-knee-less legs.

 

Everybody wore these things, too. I had a pair, and I was completely ignorant of fashion. I knew a few people who wore them almost every day, but every woman had at least one pair lurking around her closet somewhere. Aside from the strap around your foot, they were really comfortable. It was like a socially acceptable form of wearing sweats or yoga pants to school or work. That's pretty great, right? (The strap really did ruin it, though.)

 

As an added bonus, if you were a little chubby (or a lot chubby, like me) the taut angles of the pants pulled away from your legs, which made them look less jiggly. Which you could also accomplish by wearing a fabric that wasn't as thin, like jeans or regular pants. But that's beside the point.