Ukip Donor Demetri Marchessini Says Women Wearing Trousers Is 'Hostile Behaviour'

One of Ukip's top donors has criticised women for wearing trousers - saying they are deliberately making themselves look unattractive.

Demetri Marchessini believes trouser-wearing women don't realise how bad they look from behind, because of their "big bottoms".

And he has written a book, Women in Trousers: A Rear View, to make his point.

He said: "Trousers reveal and highlight every inch of a woman's lower body, and women in close-fitting trousers seen from the rear seem to be almost in the nude from the waist down.

"Countless women who would look lovely in dresses or skirts are embarrassingly unattractive in trousers."

Ukip's Eastleigh candidate, Diane James, wearing trousers

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Marchessini is a former shipping tycoon who has donated £10,000 to Ukip in two lots of £5,000 in February and March this year.

When his book was published in 2003, he told The Times: "It’s about the curves...women have curves and are meant to have curves, and trousers, which are designed for a man, do not fit this shape; they simply look terrible from the rear.

"Trousers aren’t pretty, skirts are pretty; trousers are not feminine, skirts are feminine; trousers aren’t sexy, shirts are sexy.”

In other cultures, he said, "it’s acceptable for men to express distaste,” but not in Britain.

Women wearing trousers is "hostile behaviour", Marchessini has said.

"They are deliberately dressing in a way that is opposite to what men would like."

Laura Bates, founder of the Everyday Sexism project, said: "The idea that women's bodies and what they choose to wear are still, in 2013, up for public debate and policing is a sad indictment of how far we still have to go.

"It is also sad to reflect on how frequently women's fashion choices are assumed to be made on the basis of what men will think, rather than women making their own choices for their own comfort and satisfaction."

Marchessini's comments are not the only recent trouser-related controversy to hit Ukip.

Last month it was reported that party leader Nigel Farage had worn the same pair of yellow corduroys for nine days in a row.