My assistant coach Danny caught me cuffing a pair of chinos last fall before practice and just stood there staring at my ankles like I was wearing pants made of air. “Why do you keep doing that,” he asked, stern talking tones. No actual question mark in there, just rhetorical Danny building a case against me for later. I couldn’t give him a good answer. I told him “it’s a look” and stalked off to set up cones like I was irritated he hadn’t cuff wiseugged his pants yet either, which is basically answering someone’s question with “because” when you’re nine years old.
I think that’s kinda the problem with how folks are looking at cuffed pants right now. I Googled “are cuffs on men’s pants in style” at around eleven pm like you do when you’re standing in your closet arguing with yourself over which pair of almost exactly the same gray trousers to wear, and my search was split right down the middle on the issue. There are articles on mens style sites right now declaring cuffs a timeless classic that haven’t gone out of style, while others are saying they’re dated, they’re a trend from 2015, they’re your uncle’s pants when he still thought girlfriend was a cool term and used a landline.
Nobody can decide, and I think that’s because nobody is putting these pants on an actual human body and seeing how they move around. They’re just styling them on a mannequin in good light.
The trend cycle is lying to you a little
That’s my gripe with the way people frame the question in the first place. Asking “is it in style” acts like pants are hair, like there’s some group of people sitting around deciding what’s fashionable this season and we all just comply. Doesn’t work that way for me. I have a pair of wool trousers I bought in college when I was actually playing still that are cuffed, thick,cuffed ones at that, and they’ve lasted me through three “trends” because they look good on me and do the job I need them to. I also had a pair of slim cut non-cuffed pants that I thought were tres chic in my own reflection two years ago but ended up only wearing twice because they looked ridiculously businessy on me.
When a guy blog says cuffing is coming back/going away they’re really just talking about what they’re seeing on runway shows or their favorite menswear influencers magically unpacking five dozen new sweaters. None of that crap has to look like it actually moves around in real life, it just doesn’t. I’m not six foot two and I’m almost definitely not 160 lbs. Those clothes look nice on that frame moving around like that. I played OL adjacent most my life and currently coach a strength program. My legs spend more time squatting 405 than they do being inside nice jeans. Cuffs break up that solid block of fabric when it needs breaking up. That’s not style, that’s just proportions explaining why they work.
Granted, to be fair, and because I like to believe I’ll admit when I’m wrong, I cuff way too much because I decided it was “my look.” Danny was right to give me the stink eye. Some of those pants didn’t need to be cuffed. Slim-legged puny chest ya’d think were designed for a mannequin had cuffs because I stopped evaluating whether they looked good and started forcing my clothes into my personal cliché. Trends aren’t telling you to stop cuffing unless you love them,_MOVING_ literally asking if they work on the clothes you’re actually wearing in real life.
What actually happens when you ,MOVING
I don’t buy pants advice until I see how they hold up doing something other than standing around in my apartment. Here’s what I did. I wore my trusted wool trousers with cuffs to a game last Friday. Got em dirty, wore them on my feet for three hours running up and down the sideline, screaming at referees, sprinting out to make a tackle on a skill player who decided to “challenge a flag” twenty yards past the play, got em soaked in rain walking back and forth to the team bus. Cuffs kept their shape the entire time, didn’t flap around my ankles, didn’t creep up my calves the way a crappy cuff does when the material doesn’t have enough body to hold the fold. That’s what I mean by real life.
If your pants are going to be cuffed they need enough weight to the fabric that it stays put when your leg isn’t perfectly still for a photo. Otherwise it’s just a flap of extra fabric saying “Hey look at me, I got caught in a drizzle.” I don’t know about you but I already got enough of that hanging around. To test that theory out I wore a cheap pair of cotton pants that I cut myself out of too that I had casually cuffed up because I liked how they looked but got absolutely destroyed in a full weight session.
Warm ups, squats, sled pushed at the end for some reason, by the time we’d finished the second round of squats that sucker had lost its damn fold on one side just unraveling itself into my shoe like I didn’t care.
I looked sloppy, not stylistically trendy, and one of the dudes on staff thought I’d ripped my pants. Again, not a good look if that’s what you were going for. Long story short. Cuffs aren’t going anywhere and they’re not here either, they just exist on clothes that can actually support them doing it. Ask yourself is your clothing holds a cuff when you’re using it, not when you stand perfectly still. If the answer is yes, cuff away my friend, you’ll look intentional and it won’t bother you all day. If not, leave them flat and be done with it. A cuff on skinny jeans or a thin pair of chinos isn’t some statement, it’s just a dumb looking wrinkle you don’t need.
Not sure if that’s super helpful or answering your question but that’s what wearing clothes and not getting stylin’ newsletter advice taught me, hope it helps you too.
Connor coaches rugby in Bristol and has never quite stopped training. He writes about kit that copes with a proper session and still looks fine on a Saturday, and he won’t recommend anything he hasn’t sweated in first.
