Okay, so, caveat. I have to give some context before we talk about this, because holy shit does this article make no sense coming from a menswear person if I don’t backtrack a little bit on how I got into caring about this topic in the first place. My TikTok For You page decided, at some point early last spring, that I needed to watch forty different videos of women wearing oversized men’s trousers, cuffed at the ankle, with some tiny cropped top making them look objectively better dressed than I’ve ever looked in anything in my closet. And my initial reaction, honestly not kidding you, was “that’s not fair that’s MY pants.” Not seriously, but you know what I mean. That silhouette, the big, droopy, sits- super low on the hips trouser silhouette? Is a men’s trouser silhouette.
I’ve made videos jumping around my closet screaming about how it’s my favorite trouser silhouette ever. So watching it get co-opted and immediately look better on every woman than it ever does on me got me down in the dumps, hard.
The easy critique, the one you see echoed in tons of comment sections, is that women in men’s trousers fundamentally expect you to believe it’s a costume. Baggy pants, boyfriend blazer, “ boyfriend “ whatever, cropped top, and it’s cute! In photos. Sloppy IRL. And I bought into that mindset for a hot minute too, mostly because I never actually looked into whether it was true or something I had unknowingly taken to heart from watching other people weigh in. So instead of yelling about it from on high in video form and getting roasted in the comments like I probably deserved, I decided to put together what I really thought and try actually testing it out properly. I bought a single style of trouser in both the men’s cut and the closest women’s equivalent they offered, put them side by side, took out my tape measure like a goddamn buffoon standing in my bedroom past eleven o’clock at night trying to figure out how on earth one pair of pants looked so drastically different than the other when they were literally—
The Fit Mathematics No Menswear nerd Wants To Do
“the same pair of pants.” Here’s what I found out that legitimately changed how I approach this argument. And I say legitimately because this is the only time that word will be used in this entire article. It’s all about something called drop. If you were not already aware, drop is simply the numerical difference between the waist measurement and the hip measurement on a pair of trousers. Men’s trousers typically have around a six to eight inch drop because men’s hips do not generally go that much wider than their waist. Women’s trousers are typically drafted with a much higher drop to account for 8-10 inches (or more!) because that fits closer to how many women’s bodies are actually distributed.
What that means when I’m standing there with my tape measure wondering why I’m suddenly feeling like both Robbie Williams and an idiot is that a perfectly straight-sized pair of men’s trousers on a woman’s body is very likely going to hang super loosely at the waist. Not because they pulled it off wrong. Not because “girl can’t wear the clothes.” But because, simply put, the math doesn’t add up. It’s no different than me wearing a shirt that fits perfectly in the shoulders but has sleeves drafted for someone with arms three inches smaller than mine. I spent months forming an opinion on a trend that worked or didn’t based on “feelings,” when the issue at hand was actually completely mechanical.
The waistband and hip curve of your average men’s trouser were never, at any point in the design process, attempting to negotiate with each other.
The other thing I hadn’t realized until I was frantically measuring two almost identical pairs of pants in my living room was something called rise. Men’s trousers, particularly anything in the last ten years, tends to have a lower rise, meaning they don’t sit as high or as close to your body through the front of your thighs. Women’s trousers have a reputation for having a high rise, meaning they typically rest closer to your natural waist. What that means when it is working, when it actually looks intentional rather than just like you rummaged through your boyfriend’s closet, is that it is almost never going to be a pair of pants pulled straight from the men’s rack and worn how they’re sized. It’s going to be taken in at the waist, sometimes by an inch and a half, sometimes more, to correct that initial drop without altering the leg itself, which is where all of the magic is happening.
So! Can Women Wear Men’s Clothing Or Not? ?
I want to be clear about my answer here, because I’m embarrassed it took me this damn long to reach this conclusion. Yes. Of course they can. But no, not because wearing a men’s garment doesn’t matter. It literally does. Look at the difference in those two numbers I just told you about. Gender matters when it comes to clothing construction, whether you want it to or not.
The reason women can “pull it off” when they try and men seem to fail is not spite, or physics, or luck. It’s because the elements of a men’s trouser that look damn good (going back to my point about these pants above) are virtually all gathered around the legs.
Wide leg versus skinny leg. Break they create over a shoe versus how they hug your calf. The way that fabric floats versus the way it clings. None of that has anything to do with who the pattern was drafted on, it’s just design decisions. A tailor can take in a waist in twenty minutes.
You cannot get a fun leg screamed back. You know what else you can’t do? Sit at home watching For You page content and complain about people who look different than you wearing clothes you like how they want to without bothering to understand why they might not look as good as they do on you. I spent way too long on the internet being that guy over something I could have solved with a simple question to my tailor and years of him laughing at me for not thinking of that before.
Jamie is in his early twenties, lives in Manchester and makes menswear content for a living. He writes about whatever’s actually trending this week, fast and a bit chaotic, and he’ll happily tell you when he got it wrong.
