IN THE lamplit hut, the gamekeeper undresses, watched by his employer’s wife. Her gaze lingers as he removes his shoes, gaiters and, lastly, loosens his breeches. These, we read, are made of corduroy.
The thick ribbed breeches worn by Mellors in D. H. Lawrence’s novel Lady Chatterley’s Lover, first published in 1928, are typical of working clothes worn by countrymen and labourers throughout the 19th century and beyond. Lady Chatterley would, indeed, have noted the fabric choice, so different from her own, less practical dress.
In the last decades of the 18th century, in Britain, France and the US, corduroy emerged as a durable fabric for working garments on account of its combination of thickness, strength and softness: an advertisement of, who dress for best in ‘clean, white smocks or velveteen or fustian coats’, velveteen and fustian both being forerunners of corduroy. These men and, in some instances, their employers, valued corduroy’s practicality, as well as its comfort; 18th-century doctors noted, too, the benefits of fabric breeches of the sort chosen by Mellors, which dried quickly, over leather or doeskin equivalents that were much slower to shake off damp.