I bought my first pair of men’s joggers because someone talked me into it. The trainer at the gym near my office kept saying I needed new sweatpants that weren’t my go-to gym outfit from college, the ones with elastic ankle cuffs that puff out at the shin like you’re hiding onions in your pocket. His weren’t puffy, and he kept saying mine were “not it” until I believed him, because he was impressed and I like a good clipboard. Three years later I own eleven pairs of joggers and exactly zero pairs of anything else for the fifteen percent of my life outside of a suit. What’s important is that I did not expect any of this. I work in finance!
I calculate cost per wear like other people make small talk. Joggers had jogged (get it?) my brain for years as something my dad wore if he gave up, the pants equivalent of eating cereal for dinner three nights in a row. I built an ideology around tailored trousers being the better investment even at home: they drape better, have better resale value (in my head if not reality), better communicated to whoever was passing me at the grocery store that I wasn’t totally lazy. Which sounds ridiculous even to me, but that’s how strong the mental framework was until getting smoked on it by some dude with a clipboard. I remain irrationally offended.
I fought the comfort argument even though I knew I wouldn’t
The part about running a truly thorough cost benefit analysis on joggers vs everything else in my closet for leisure activities, which I have done, several times, including today because apparently this is who I am now. Cost per wear over three seasons, wash frequency, shrinkage potential in my dryer that dies halfway through every load and comes back hotter than before; by every practical metric joggers could not lose. They’re the only clothing in my rotation that can survive an entire day of doing literally nothing strenuous, and it turns out lazing around the house is way harder on pants than an office day. Hell at the office I’m at least sitting still. At home I’m flopping around trying to stretch out a hamstring I pulled bending over to pet my neighbor’s dog (don’t ask), then on the couch, then crouching down to plug something into an outlet closest to the floor. My pants need to cope with that activity without complaint. Comfort was the easy part.
But the reason I made the switch wasn’t actually all that logical. It was Tuesday and I’d had a deal blow up in my face a little bit, not the end of the world but the kind of blow up that eats your evening scrolling through slack wondering if anyone else had their week sabotaged by someone who didn’t realize they were being a jerk. When I got home I grabbed the pair of joggers I’d rediscovered hiding in a drawer two months ago and put them on without thinking about it, and immediately felt better. Not because of the metrics (although they checked every box) but how they fit. Straight enough through the thigh to know they weren’t a joke, loose enough around the calf not to look like a barrel. Something about that first wear felt like nighttime turning into weekend, like today wasn’t just more time with something bad that happened. Pants shouldn’t be able to do that. I know they shouldn’t, and they did it, and I’ve accepted that for me the spreadsheet isn’t the full buying decision anymore.
What I didn’t see coming was how much the fit mattered once I cared. The first pair were cheap, thin cotton, ankle cuffs too aggressive and suddenly I was wearing slacks that my high school band had canceled practice over. Pair number two went straight through the thigh, relaxed only where they needed to be, tapered through the ankle without having to bulk up with elastic, and hit every marker I didn’t know I was checking until I saw them. Wore those to get coffee on Saturday, ran into the mailperson who lives in my building’s elevator. She asked where I got them, and do you know what I had to say to her? Withoutprompting she asked me where I got my joggers. Literallyyears into sweatpants owning me I can count the times someone’s asked that as high as one. With a blinking, twitching.
I’ll fully own how I bought too many because I’m Malcolm Gladwell and this is Bullshit
Got the fit I liked, then did what I always do and went nuts. Eleven pairs. Four of which are charcoal gray. Come on. Even I know that’s not diversification. That’s yellow lights while Bitcoin’s going up and now everyone’s reading about it hedge. That’s your retirement savings riding on the returns of one overly marketed fund. I have “the gym” joggers. I have “leaving the apartment but nothing beyond Starbucks” joggers. I have “airports and airplanes” joggers that are thicker soaring through security like a jacket but fail to keep me any warmer than the ones I wear around the city. I have one pair that I bought because they looked thicker online but were really just heav ier, and lesson learned there but I’ll never admit that to anyone but myself. So there.
I even got them too loose once. There’s a “relaxed” fit that DOES exist; it’s actually most cuts in my drawer.
But there was one brand whose idea of relaxed was “we dyed the thighs black so you won’t be able to tell where your pants ends” and I wore them once. To pick up groceries on a Sunday, caught myself in the freezer section and swore out loud at the pane of glass separating me and my embodied nightmare. Sticking in because it happened and I let myself buy eleven pairs? Guess how many I kept.
I’m never going back to sweatpants, but here’s what I will say about joggers now. If you’re in the men’s section wondering if they stretch far enough to be worth trying on in the first place: fabric weight and leg taper are your north stars more than brand. And if you really want to know if they’re right, try spending a Sunday in them. Do they make a Monday feel less bad? You’re keeping them.
Ade works in finance in the City and treats his wardrobe like a portfolio, which he admits is a slightly mad way to think about a blazer. He writes about office clothes that survive twelve hour days, back to back meetings and the odd video call.
