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The first Leotard
Mary Vanaman O'Gorman
May 15, 1961
A daring young Frenchman on a flying trapeze floated into the vocabulary of the world
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May 15, 1961

The First Leotard


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The provocative garment known today as a leotard has long been the standard uniform for acrobats at work. It was a commonplace even in the Paris of a century ago, though there was nothing commonplace whatever about the young man who gave it his name. He was Jules L�otard, the original daring young man on the flying trapeze.

Clad in what was then commonly known as a maillot, the ordinary practice costume of a gymnast or an acrobat, Jules soared into the consciousness of Parisian circusgoers on the night of November 12, 1859 when, by means of a complex arrangement of ropes, rings and horizontal bars such as none had ever seen before, he set himself flying birdlike through the air over the tanbark in a brilliant series of death-defying passes, turns, wild pirouettes and somersaults. "Reckless breakneck flights from trapeze to trapeze," wrote one enthralled witness, "like some tropical bird swooping from branch to branch leaving a dazzling but blurred impression of his vivid plumage."

It is difficult today to comprehend the extraordinary impact this debut made upon those who witnessed it. True, the art of the jongleur was a popular one at the time, and the young performer himself was a devastatingly handsome fellow, with curly brown hair and a broad-shouldered, compact frame described by one contemporary as "elegant rather than athletic." But handsome young men are not so rare, and even in 19th-century France, circus acrobats were relatively common. The thing that gripped the imagination of Paris—indeed, of all Europe—and set Jules L�otard apart from the rest was the fact that while they flip-flopped monotonously on fixed bars, he flew through the air with the greatest of ease in a dreamy, rhythmical, fanciful flight that charmed audiences.

The biggest circuses in Europe fell over each other trying to book L�otard. He could demand, and get, the unheard-of price of 500 francs a performance (about $95 at that time). Long lines jostled at the box offices where he was billed. Smart shops featured L�otard canes, cravats, brooches, even pastries. The humble maillot was rechristened the leotard in honor of its most famed wearer; the impact of his success is reflected in the fact that it has been the leotard ever since. In the last coruscating years of the Second Empire, the acrobat L�otard was a brilliant gem in the imperial crown, the focus of every eye, the fascinating topic of every conversation.

His father had also been an acrobat, but Jules was reared in the kind of solid, middle-class tradition common to the civil servant, or small businessman, ambitious for greater things for his children. Born August 1, 1838 in Toulouse, where his father had founded a new school of gymnastics, he was given all the bourgeois advantages. He had piano lessons (which he loathed), the edifying trip to a foreign city ( London, which he found chilly), the sound schooling that led to training for a profession (the law). And on his graduation from school at 17, his father gave him the standard gentleman's pocket watch in a flip-open hunting case. L�otard's parents eagerly awaited the day when their son and only child would quit the family gymnasium and take his place in society as a respected practitioner of some learned profession. But when the choice between "the robes of a lawyer and the maillot of a gymnast" confronted him, young Jules didn't hesitate. "The trapeze," he wrote, "was my natural cradle." He missed the chance to make an etymological pun, for maillot is also the French word for swaddling clothes.

He set the trapezes swinging

One day when Jules, in his late teens, was working out in his father's gym, he thought of a tremendous new grand exercice, which involved the foolish and foolhardy notion of using loosely hanging trapeze bars and leaping from one to the other while they were in motion. To attempt it, however, he needed someone to start the second trapeze swinging. "Absolument non" was his father's instant reply to the suggestion. "C'est impossible." But when Papa L�otard left Jules sought the help of another pupil, set the trapezes swinging and "fully confident, launched myself into the air. The other trapeze was sent off, and for better or worse, it came into my hands. I was bien p�le at the end of the turn, but le tour �tait fait, and like Archimedes I cried, 'Eureka!' "

From this start, trapeze flying has developed into today's glittering, sophisticated complex of shuttling, looping, crisscrossing acrobatic feats, performed breathtakingly high in the air with a whole troupe of catchers and flyers performing at once. L�otard p�re gave in, became his son's catcher and helped him to evolve a routine that required two trapezes and a pair of round or triangular rings, all hung at some distance apart from an overhead beam. Underneath, raised a few feet from the floor, lay a long, padded plank. At one end was a platform for L�otard fils. Papa stood at the other end on his own platform (in full-dress suit at public performances) and swung a trapeze toward his son, timing it so that Jules could throw himself from one hold to another. The two of them elaborated this drill and tried it out on pupils and visitors to the gymnasium. Word got around; professional acrobats, many of them old friends of M. L�otard, began stopping by in Toulouse to catch the act. Soon France's foremost circus impresario, Louis Dejean, got wind of the matter and sent scouts. They returned with such extraordinary reports that Dejean himself journeyed to Toulouse. He put the young gymnast through his paces for three long hours and refused to leave until he had persuaded Jules's reluctant parents to approve an engagement the following August at the Cirque de l'Imp�ratrice in Paris.

The big chance was missed

Not yet 21, the Toulousain was awed by Paris and terrified at the thought of exposing his little exercice to the enormous city's sophisticated eye. As he and his father saw to the installation of the rigging and platform from which he was to make his revolutionary flights, Jules felt that he was "constructing his own catafalque." His fever of anxiety soon brought him to the point of real fever—a serious onslaught of typhoid. He was ill for a month, and the disease left him limp, his muscles useless. His big chance seemed to have passed. His father took him back to Toulouse. But within a month L�otard had again recovered his strength, his timing and his nerve. His momentous debut was rescheduled for November, this time at Paris' Cirque-Napoleon, and there his success was instantaneous and overwhelming.

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