My nephew arrived Thanksgiving day rocking pants so sharply creased you could have sliced mail with them, tapered down to nearly nothing at the ankle, and I made some joke about him trying his grandfather’s suit trousers. He told me, patiently, like talking to someone who still has a rotary phone in their kitchen, that those were pants right now. Wide through the top, narrow through the bottom, no break, ankle just sort of floating up there above the shoe like it got lost.
I didn’t say anything for a minute because I knew what they were. I hadn’t seen them at any store in the last ten years but I knew them. From 1987. My brother had them in the exact same cut, pegged khakis he wore until they literally unraveled, and I remember thinking back then that the shape looked like someone started your typical pair of pants and ran out of fabric halfway down the leg.
I did not say this to my nephew. I tucked it away, like you tuck away most things you realize at seventy, but I’ve been thinking about it since because there’s something underneath my knee jerk reaction to get eye-rolly about this and that’s whether pants have changed at all, or if we’re just watching the same three styles ping pong fashionable while everyone under thirty thinks they invented spandex.
Does the Leg Shape Argument Repeat Itself?
Okay, what’s actually different here, and I will give credit where credit is due before I dive into my bitching, is that the tapered, cropped, no-break pant that’s been everywhere lately isn’t exactly the eighties pant reborn, because the eighties pant was almost exclusively pleated and worn high with quite a bit of room through the seat, while what we’re selling now is flat front, slimmer through the hip, and cut short enough that you’re intentionally showing sock or ankle. That is a legitimate difference. Alters how the entire leg looks and feel, less Dad’s church pants, more something you wear with a sneaker and mean it. I declared it a straight up nineties redux probably within five seconds of witnessing it on my nephew, which I realize says more about how many styles I’ve already rotated through than about the pants themselves, so I’ll concede that point.
What
What has never changed in the last however many years I’ve been buying pants is that solid, plain front straight leg wool trouser or cotton trouser with just a touch of break. No taper madness, nothing that looks like it’s trying to compete with Jonathan Wolf on Vogue’s cover. I wore a pair into January last year that I bought in 2002, and everything since then has had to fight that pair specifically to get worn by me, not against the trousers on display at whichever store I was shopping in that season. Most lose that battle. Who knows, maybe the tapered trouser resurgence we’re in the middle of is perfectly engineered for right now and will look just as dated thirty years from this moment as my nephews pants would’ve looked on me at his age. I’m not saying we need to ditch it. Low hanging fruit, I get it. I’m just saying I know better than to believe anything trouser related is here to stay because I got sold that lie at least three times already and I’m old enough to know I’ll buy into it again.
Reg spent thirty years buying for a menswear shop floor in Sheffield before it closed. He writes about clothes built to last, compares every new buy with something he’s owned for twenty years, and has made most of the expensive mistakes already.
