Tearaway Track Pants
Warm-up pants with a row of snaps down the outside of each leg, made so an athlete could get out of them fast without taking off their shoes. A 1992 patent filing already described them as a basketball regular, with about twenty snaps, every one of which had to be snapped back.
Tearaway pants are warm-up pants with snap fasteners running the length of both legs, so each leg opens along its outside seam. They have also been sold as breakaway pants and popper pants, and the sport most associated with them is basketball. A 2009 patent filing explained the point of the design: players often have to get out of their warm-ups rapidly when entering a game, and breakaway pants let them "quickly remove the pants without the need of removing their athletic shoes."
We couldn't find a record of who made the first pair, so this entry doesn't name one. The earliest dated document we found that describes them is a U.S. patent application filed on November 30, 1992, by an inventor named Gregory H. Baum, who was trying to improve on them. His filing describes a warm-up pant "often used by basketball players," with a releasable seam down the outside of each leg "closed by a plurality of snap-type fasteners," and then lists what was wrong with it. The snaps didn't release easily unless you grabbed the pant right next to them, which took several tugs, and afterward "each of typically about twenty snaps must be individually put together again to wear the pants." The patent was granted on May 31, 1994.
The style has stayed in production. In November 2019 Hypebae covered Nike's $80 Sportswear Icon Clash Popper Pants as the return of tear-away pants, and pitched them as a way to round off a "'90s street style look."
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