Why didn't Kate ever wear pants?

I never liked the Kate character. She was referred to as "the farmer's daughter" by her sister in law, in Skeleton In The Closet. She always had the pained look on her face. Carol Brady was more believable. I think the writers created this boring, cookie cutter character. She wore dresses because she was boring and non descript.

Sada Thompson probably didn't wear pants because she didn't feel that they'd flatter her figure. Unlike most leading actresses at that time, and especially now, she didn't wear a size five or six. Noel Taylor designed her wardrobe, and seemingly dressed her in flattering shirtwaist dresses in darker colors and subdued patterns and lines which downplayed her plumpish figure, and defined her waistline.
I recall Patricia Morrill-as Elaine Hogan, wearing pants occasionally, but she did have a somewhat better figure than Miss Thompson. Meredith Baxter alluded to Miss Thompson's frustration with her increasing girth once shooting began one season. Apparently she'd put on a few pounds during the off-season, and her weight did appear to fluctuate from one season to the next. Bear in mind that they lived in Pasadena, a more reserved suburb of Los Angeles, and that they were portraying an upper middle income-and by all appearances, conservative family.
It is true however, that for LA, her style was decidedly reserved, and more typical of San Francisco or Napa Valley matrons than the relaxed, cotton-shift and caftan-wearing style of most LA housewives of the time--although Kate sported caftans, but never outside the house. My grandmother--who was two years older than Sada Thompson, occasionally wore gloves and hats well into the eighties, and my mom wore hats into the millennium, but we're from the south. It's too bad that women and men don't put more into their appearance these days. I'm relatively young--early forties--and what passes for dress wear these days used to be sports, tennis, and golf attire.

-easyasdell

I think the show was actually pretty spot on in terms of Kate's dress. As you said the costumes highlight the change between parents and children.

I just looked up ST's age. She was only a few years younger than my grandmother. My grandmother died in 1974 and a week before she died she bought her very first pantsuit. She had never even considered wearing a pair of slacks. For that generation of women it would have been a change. The irony is their daughters were running around in jeans and pants.

Even at some colleges in the 1970's female professors could not wear pants-one of my professors said that the day the faculty voted on if women could wear pants he looked out and 90% of the female students were in jeans or pants but it was controversial if female professors could do the same.

And yes white gloves were still the norm in upper class circles.

Which shows you how much the world changes in such a short time.

My mom was born in 1926, so was in her early fifties when this show was on. As far back as I can remember, into the late 1950s, she and all of her friends sometimes wore pants. This was in southern California.

I like the occasional caftans Kate wears, but most of her dresses look too conservative to be worn in the 1970s.