When Did Sailors In the US Navy Start Wearing Bell-Bottom Trousers and How Did the Pants Originate?
British sailors started wearing bell-bottom trousers near the end of the eighteenth century. Before then they wore “slops,” a loose-fitting mid-calf-length pant. “Bells” were only worn by “swabs,” or regular seamen, and not by officers. Regulation dictated that the bells be made of wide cuffs large enough to roll up to the thigh
