#11: Pants
Five encounters with pants
if you need a break from reading the news, work, etc etc, read some things about pants
See: Big Pants!
The reemergence of Big Pant is one I’ve been waiting for. I suffocated my legs in skinny jeans in the aughts paired with the shirts and tiny sweaters or the oversized blouse and chunky belt that made my torso look like a bowtie. But I loved flowy pants so much that I wrote in my diary about the day I got gauchos:
You’ll see that, directly after my gaucho proclamation, I veer into some bite-sized existentialism, as one does.
This article, while focusing on pants, draws out the greater language of style via fashion in our lives. Style is something that everyone has, whether you think you do or not, and clothes are one of its vehicles because, most of the time, we’re wearing them. Choosing to not wear a certain type of clothing is a style choice. Buying the cheapest shirt on the rack is style. Wearing only designer is style. Sticking to skinny jeans is style. Big Pant is style. And it’s changing at a fast enough clip that binaries of “good” or “bad” fashion are almost irrelevant. It’s constant dialogue between us and our peers, strangers, and culture at large. Jonah Weiner, author of the pants article, the newsletter called Blackbird Spyplane, and a chronic skinny jean wearer, sums it up this way:
Weiner goes on to talk about the evolution of style as conversation, especially in this age where there is a whole category of content focused on watching people Get Ready. Clothes as language is easy to dismiss as frivolous because I sometimes equate caring about style as privilege– which it also can be– and is often relegated to those that can spend. But we all wear pants– or skirts or dresses or shorts, etc. What should I wear is a universal decision and therefore worthy of deep analysis.
I think about clothes– on myself, on others, how to buy, how not to buy. It’s moving to see something crafted in such a way that it informs (sometimes) who the wearer might be. Trends, fickle things that we all participate in both consciously and unconsciously, make us make decisions. They give us visual markers for time and movements– early humans had cave drawings, we have Facebook photos of us in cigarette- cut skinny jeans.
There’s more of an emphasis on wearing what we like, but we’ll always be beholden to the larger zeitgeist. We like cycles. We like trying something, declaring it finished, moving to something else and eventually remembering the old something and wanting it back. Some cycles, though, I can’t go back to when I remember them. The original cycle was enough and the new cycle doesn’t need my contribution (looking at you, Crocs).
Clothes create memory. I purchased the winter coat I have– long, burnt orange, wool and my second skin in cold months– because I saw a woman wearing it in Harlem and practically chased her down to ask where she’d gotten it. I tell people regularly about getting in the elevator with a GQ editor who was wearing a green velvet suit that silenced everyone with its pristine stitching. When he was in the fourth grade, my grandmother took my brother shopping and allowed him to pick out a pair of pants on his own. My brother, who chose clothes based what gym shorts were closest to him in the mornings, selected a pair of traffic cone-orange, zip-off pants. They were the pants heard ‘round the world. I asked my brother if he remembered why he chose them and he gave two potential reasons: one) the Vols, his favorite college team and future alma mater; two) “Maybe because I was ten and didn’t know what to do with agency.”
It was 2001, and they were Big Pants.
My diary entry, the one with the gaucho-to-whatislife pipeline, touches on a specific power that style via fashion can have: clothing lends itself to imagination. They’re a reminder that we have– or, sadly, sometimes don’t– have agency. Either way, clothes can be a conduit for picturing something else for ourselves. I want to wear this _____ when I go to ____ because I want to feel _______. Imagining ourselves in whatever scenario that fills in those blanks propels us into the future, into situations where we don’t know what will happen. We don’t know what we will do or say or how we will feel during or afterwards– but we imagine what we might want to look like in that space and, in doing so, a small piece of the future feels real.
In talking about the orange pants, my brother also reminded me that my grandmother also let him pick out a shirt. He chose a red half-zip. His style was, apparently, Big Pant On Fire chic.
Taste: Polly Pocket clothes
The Things We Chewed (this is a Gen Z thread, but happy to see that what we chewed as children spans generations)
Touch: Shorts!
‘Tis hot where I am so I’ve got my terrible cut-off jean shorts on and want to remind you that shorts come in all shapes and sizes including these from Free People which unlocked many, many feelings across the internet.
Smell: Workout clothes
I went on a dive this week about when you should replace workout clothes. Some sources said every six months which feels like a lie. Others said every year, depending on amount of use.
But you can’t tell me that the Nike running shorts– if you were alive in the years 2007-2014, you know the ones– aren’t immortal. They’ve been with me through some of high school, college, three presidential elections. They are old and I cannot, will not, let them go (they probably need to go).
Hear: “That’s pants”
It’s a personality trait to not like SNL. That’s a larger conversation. For now, enjoy this SNL sketch that I think about a lot
That’s all for now– if you have any pants-related observations, lmk. Otherwise, I hope you’re well and I hope you have some pants you love