All About Flares

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Welcome to the Flared Trousers Portal! The number one site for all things related to flares! We have tips on where to buy, how to wear, the history, videos, clips, photos, stories and a campaign to bring the flared trouser back into the forefront of modern fashion.

How can you help the cause?

  • Upload you flare photos to Flickr and add them to our group
  • Spread Flares Love, if you like to wear flares link to us from your blog!

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Flares: The greatest fashion garment ever created

Flared Trousers Pattern

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Anyone with a small talent for sewing can convert a regular straight legged pattern into a flare, generally adjustments to legs or arms are relatively easy.  This is great news for anyone who is keen to join the ranks of modern flare wearers but doesn’t have a parent who lived through that era!

Just follow our simple steps for cutting and sewing trousers and you too can make your own flares before you know it!

How to Make Flares

Lay out your fabric on to a table and put together the pattern pieces as normal, but ensure you allow some extra cloth next to the ankles of each trouser leg area.  Now you can pin the pattern sections into place.

Chose how much wider you want your flared trousers to be.  This number will be how many inches you want the flare to be on one side, while the leg of the trousers is flat.  For example, if you want the trousers to flare out four inches from the normal pattern, you will want to cut two extra inches on the front side of the trouser leg and two inches on the rear side.

Once you have decided on how much flare you want, mark the new measurements on the cloth.  Next, locate the knee of the trouser leg.  You can do this by  folding the hem of the trousers up to the crotch line.  Mark a position, on each side of each leg, that is two inches above the knee.  This should be done before any adjustments are made to the length of the trousers.

Draw a new cut line from the knee area to the hem.  As you cut the trouser legs, cut on the new line then taper towards the original trouser leg pattern, just above the knee.

Please Share Your Creative Talents

If any flare making seamstress is out there then we’d love to hear back from you, please please please send us your photos of home made flares and we’d love to share them with our occasional reader.

Drop us a comment below and we’ll get in touch!

Let us know if you have:

  • Work in progress photos to share
  • Pictures of you modelling your creation
  • Any top tips for making flared trousers at home

We’d love to share your creativity.

Why you should love flares!

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  • Quite simply, they look cool.  That’s right, get noticed by the opposite sex whilst out and about on the town this weekend.  Tired of getting ignored every night?  A pair of trendy flared trousers will turn your life around.  Maybe.
  • They were good enough for our parents.  OK, so we have all had a giggle at our parent’s photos but secretly you think they looked pretty damn cool.
  • The seventies was the coolest decade for fashion.  No arguments on this one, quite simply the 70s redefined fashion and the flares were at the forefront of the revolution!
  • You’ll get noticed in the street.  People will stop and stare, hopefully in a good way, but hey, sometimes its nice to have creepy people stare at you too.
  • Members of the opposite sex will find you irresistible, and at the end of the day, this is all that really matters to any of us.
  • You can join the navy and you won’t need to buy a new pair of trousers to fit in.
  • You can contribute to our Flares photo group.  Win the respect of all that pass through the greatest flares based wesite in the whole wide world web.  Possibly.
  • You’ll be the envy of all your friends.  They will be desperate to know how and where you got them.  No problem – just send them over to this site and we’ll sort them out!
  • You can star in one of many famous flare wearing tribute acts, everyone from ABBA to Elvis wore a good honest flare at some point in their careers.

Got any more suggestions, let us know below!

Flared Trousers: The ultimate Fancy Dress accessory!

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It goes without saying on the world’s premier site dedicated to the Flared Trouser, that flares are an item of fashion wear that can be worn at any time in any company.  The resurgence of flares is coming slowly and an item that was once the stuff of amusing photos of our parents is fast becoming an acceptable form of clothing for a new generation.

But, that said, flared trousers will always be worn at fancy dress parties.  You know it, I know it, and until attitudes have changed completely, lets not fight it!  So today we celebrate the flares and fancy dress!

Here are Our Top Flared Fancy Dress Outfits:

  • Disco Dancer: Straight out of Saturday Night Fever.  The 70s Disco dancer is a great choice, especially if heading out onto the town and going for a Boogie
  • Pimp:  The classic 70s pimp right out of the movies, of course we aren’t suggesting taking up the job for real!
  • Elvis:  Everyone knows the classic Elvis flared jump suit, top it off with a wig, and some “thank you very much”
  • Hippy:  Peace man, the classic 70s get up
  • Abba: The classic flared catsuits are recognised all over the world
  • Grease:   Set a little before the 70s, but a great film from that era
  • Sailor: Remember, sailors wore flares too, so how about a pirate fancy dress outfit?

What are your favourite outfits, upload them to Flickr and share with the rest of us!

Photo Credit

The Greatest Flared Trousers Wearers of all time

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Lets be honest, everyone reading this is already sold on the awesome powers of flared trousers.

But how did we come to appreciate this fine fashion statement in this way?  Well the answer my friends is thanks to a long list of alpha male flares wearers from the 1970s and beyond.  We all know it is just a matter of time before these funky fashion items once again become the trend of the day but until then we will patiently basking in the  classic distinguised history of this most amazing trouser.

So just who of the famous flare wearers do we admire most here at flaredtrousers.co.uk?

  1. John Travolta:  Yes, you probably already guessed it.  John is our number one flares wearer.  Of course we are thinking of the iconic Tony Manero white suit as featured in Saturday Night Fever.  If you don’t know what I am talking about then to be honest you aren’t cool enough to wear a pair yourself.  Go buy some dungarees.
  2. James Bond:  Not the ripped bone crunching Bond of recent years.  No.  We are of course referring to the Bond of the 70′s which can only mean, Roger Moore.  Bond was always the coolest and he has never been cooler than in a pair of flares.  Think of Moonraker, think of The Spy Who Loved Me.  Think of flares.
  3. George Best:  The oringinal football style icon.  Forget the Beckams and Ronaldos of today, this is the guy that started it and in his 1970′s peak you will find him regularly wearing a pair of wide angle bell bottomed trouser.
  4. Elvis:  The king of rock and roll.  Initially know for his slick ’50s looks but a decade later Elvis coined his trademark outfit – the flared jumpsuit.  This is now one of the most iconic outfits in pop history and will be forever associated with the King.

Now tell us who your favourite flare wearers are?

History of Flared Trousers*

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Ancient Trousers

Flares were introduced to Britain by the Romans over 2000 years ago. These fun loving Italians were best known for their togas but it is a little known fact that they wore flared trousers when spending an evening at the equivalent of a modern day disco, or diskos as they would have called it back then.

The flare fell out of fashion for several thousands of years. This style was simply not practical for medieval man as he set about his business on horse back preferring to wear stockings instead.

Popular Seventies Clothing

It was not until the 1970′s, when popular British TV star Richard Madeley became a leading fashion icon of the time, that flares began a resurgence of popularity here in the UK.

The fashion press of the day was renowned for following the style fashion trends set by Richard, and where he went, the rest followed. Before long the flared trouser was a necessary fashion accessory.

Footballers, hippies and even the British royal family all took to flared trouser wearing during this brief idyllic moment in history.  If you weren’t wearing flares, you might have not bothered wearing trousers at all.

Modern Resurgence

Unlike Richard’s popularity, the common flare fell out of fashion in the 1980′s.

It is hard for us to accept but flares were widely ridiculed throughout the following decades.  Children would point at photos of their parents from the seventies and routinely laugh out loud.

It was not until a campaign led by flaredtrousers.co.uk did they reach the same level of interest as their 1970′s heyday.

“true style never goes out of fashion”

Modern style icons such as Lady Ga Ga, Richard Madeley and Simon Cowell have continued to support the cause – flare wearing is once again at the top of the fashion agenda.

*this page may not be factually correct