Tapered Pants, The Sequel

DRESS PANT SILHOUETTES

Professionally speaking, I spent the end of 2006 through the beginning of 2012 in jeans. You've presumably read my endless blabbering about how my taste in denim changed over the years, so I'll just say that my jeans nowadays are a slim-fitting straight leg with very little break. I thought I wanted my dress pants to fit the same way when I took my new job back in April of 2012. What follows is the lesson I learned (the hard way) in the hopes that if you're a reader who's into a mega-slim pant leg, you'll think twice.

My college job was at Banana Republic as a sales associate, and I loved it. I was one of the younger employees and not only was I proud to work in a much higher-end environment than I'd ever been in before, I really enjoyed being dressed up on campus during the day. Not only did it mean that I could head right to work from class; I also enjoyed the attention I got being the guy in slacks and a dress shirt while everyone else looked like, well, college kids.

I had a bunch of dress pants at the time: dark charcoal pinstripes, navy with tan pinstripes, solid grey flannels, and a bunch of others. Too bad I had no idea how they were supposed to fit. I wore them a little below my hips like you would a pair of jeans, which in hindsight meant that the rise (crotch) looked way too low. I had the inseams shortened accordingly, which screwed me in the end. When I tried them on again during a closet clean-out in 2007, I pulled them up to my natural waist (where they belonged) and they were way too short, without enough material to let down.

Well, shit.

PANT BREAK

I hadn't worn dress pants regularly for many years when I ordered some for my new job, and this lack of recent experience bit me in the ass. While I learned my lesson about wearing dress pants at my natural waist, I let my taste in denim (barely any break, very slim leg openings) get the best of me. 

The result? Look at the picture above. I got pants that sit nice and high on my waist but are so breakless that they're fine when standing but show too much sock when I walk, even for my taste. What's worse is that I had them made so tapered that even if I were to have them lengthened, they wouldn't have enough room to rest comfortably on my shoes. They're fine, but anything I get in the future will have a bigger leg opening, for sure.

My style is apparently more fluid than I thought.