crazy, stupid, pants
Welcome to a special issue on pants in all their baffling, frustrating, maddening glory.
One of the easiest ways to unite people is through hatred. Positivity cannot compete with the unity of despising the same thing as someone else. As I’ve prepared for this very important (and very delayed) themed newsletter over the past weeks, I have dipped the frayed edge of my denim Carhartt trousers into the big, beautiful, awful, confounding world of pants. It’s a topic that I’ve been mildly interested in for a while, but after reading that NYT Magazine feature “Why Are Pants So Big (Again)" I shared in my last edition of the newsletter, my brain has become encased in denim. Move aside, jamps, janties, and jorts. My body is being steered by a jrain.
Pants are not just another piece of clothing to swaddle yourself in. Pants anchor the cultural zeitgeist. The pants clock meme on Twitter may be ridiculous, but there’s a reason it has nearly 9 million views, 398 comments, 11K retweets, and 145K likes. Discourse on the width of pants touches a nerve. It’s the sartorial third rail. Is part of that because everyone with an internet connection and a social media account thinks they’re a trend forecaster? Yes, partly. But the problem is that now more than ever, the trend lines look like seismographs. TikTok, with its proliferation of “microtrends” and adding “-core” to the end of anything remotely unifying, has accelerated the demise of any semblance of monoculture.
We are in a lawless era, the Wild West of Pants.
This why these next five pebbles are dedicated to pants in all their baffling, frustrating, maddening glory. This edition features some cultural tea leaf reading via Crazy, Stupid, Love and Curb Your Enthusiasm, insights from friends and strangers, and ends with a screed against adults who wear pants with the same design element as toddler clothes. We'll get to it.
Welcome to issue five of 5 pebbles.
01) notes on the “fucking impossible” search for the perfect pant
As part of my research on pants, I took to the internet to ask internet friends about two things. The first was a general temperature check on the state of pants today, but the second was whether they’d ever found a perfect pair of pants. This latter question, naturally, generated the most heat. For Jack, a Berlin-based designer, the hunt for a boy band-worthy fit rarely ends in sartorial salvation. “Pants are fucking impossible to find for me. I want it to highlight my butt and waist but also be bulky in the leg. Basically, I want the Backstreet Boys' pants.”
Meanwhile, for Pete, a menswear industry vet I met through a pop culture Discord server, it’s about the journey not the destination. “I think wearing pants is an ever-evolving experience. I usually have one pair that I feel is close to perfect, and then I get a new pair that’s closer, over and over. If I go back a few iterations, I often can’t believe I ever wore them.” Angelica, a writer specializing in culture and a scholar in Europop and Eurodisco, chimed in: “For a woman who grew up in the 1990s and was a teen in the 2000s, wearing pants is a minefield. Fucking pants become the measure of one's self-worth despite years of unlearning that behavior thanks to two decades of disgusting social conditioning.”
The solution for some wasn’t to let their eyes glaze over on online shopping sites; salvation was scouring the used market to find secondhand gems. “I would say generally, the best pants I have are vintage/secondhand. I need shit that isn't flimsy and has a fit that works for an actual human body,” astrologer Bianca Giulion explained over Instagram. “I think it's important to shop in person, even if humbling, so you can fully understand the integrity of the fabric and construction. And in general, I think it's the most frustrating when you're actively looking for something and can't find exactly what you want. That's why I love thrifting/secondhand. [I am] always sort of passively looking and building a wardrobe that way.”
For Ryan, a Seattle-based DJ (and good friend from Las Vegas), a mountain of research led him down the well-worn athleisure track to Lululemon. “I like having functional clothing that can be used in a lot of different circumstances and environments. I did my due diligence and did quite a bit of research into what the best sweatpants are, especially for training for half marathons, where these pants need to be very durable for an extended period of time. It was less about the brand and more about "Wow, these are well-reviewed, and people like them." Sometimes, corporations DO provide a great option for people. But many people don't give a fuck/like the brand recognition and what it says about them as a person.”
The issue, as Ryan sees it, is that the entire process of pants shopping is a luxury. “The average American is too busy, too overworked, too tired, and too stressed to dive into any analysis on what their best clothing options are, let alone pants. Which is exactly what these corporations want. When you tie in inflation and America's general ambivalence to what's going on in the rest of the world and blindness towards globalization and the world economy at large, then you get a disinterested populace who wants to maintain the status quo to make their lives as easy as possible.” If things like SHEIN haul videos are at one end of the easy-but-"fashionable" pipeline, the opposite end can be found piled high on slabs at America's favorite wholesale mecca: Costco.
02) a journey into r/askmen to answer the age-old question: fellas, is it gay to buy new clothes more than once per year?
I wanted to dig a bit deeper into Ryan’s last point about how globalization and the stress of being alive impact shoppers — specifically, menswear buyers. Shopping for clothes has historically been seen as a “leisure” activity — despite, you know, needing to wear clothes to be accepted into society. Inevitably, this also means clothes shopping has largely been viewed through a gendered lens. For much of the modern era, the mood could best be summed up like this: Shopping for clothes? As a guy? Ha! Gaaaayyyyy. Even though I know in my heart and soul that menswear meme accounts regurgitating the same content aren’t real life, it does feel like men are a bit freer to care about their fits these days, aka spend more money on a nice pair of pants.
This may come as a surprise, but insights gleaned from menswear retail reports are as lukewarm as a forgotten cup of tea. Men value fit over function, tend to buy seasonally rather than continuously throughout the year, and the menswear market has grown from $89.6 billion in 2015 to $143.63 billion in 2023. But data is data. Sometimes, the best way to know what’s going on with normal guys being guys is to head to their watering hole: r/AskMen. Seven months ago, a user posed this question: Men, how often do you buy new clothes? The answers run the gamut from the usual wife-guy fare to the truly incredible line: "Nice clothes are for ugly people."
I never buy clothes. My wife buys them when I get holes in them or they’re worn out. I only need a handful of grey, black and blue shirts. A few pairs of jeans and shorts.
When they fall apart or my wife makes me.
Usually I get 1-2 new things per season (summer? I could use another pair of cargo shorts. Winter? How are my gloves/boots? Autumn? Sweet, new flannels at Costco, etc) and get rid of the oldest stuff once per year.
When Costco “.97’s” something I like
I can’t remember the last pair of clothing that I bought for myself for myself lol my fiancée does all my clothes shopping too
For 35 years I wore the shirts I got free at high tech trade shows.
When my wife makes me.
Idk, I have the body of a God and it shouldn't take clothes to make that obvious. Nice clothes are for ugly people. I look pretty fucking amazing in a six year old bleach stained ill fitting shirt.
I’m 90% sure that the last one was written by a gymcel who idolizes 2011-era Ryan Gosling, but we’re getting there.
03) steve carrell and larry david might just be pop culture’s preeminent normcore drip kings
If you hadn’t already guessed, I rewatched Crazy, Stupid, Love recently. One of the film’s most enduring scenes is the shopping montage of Cal Weaver (Carrell) getting yassified by Jacob Palmer (Ryan Gosling), an all-American, tailored suit-wearing apex predator of the Serengeti that is American suburban malls. Seeing it again through fresh, 2024-era eyes, I forgot how much of a dom/sub undertone pulses through the narrative. Here, we have a defeated man on a shopping spree with someone who was functionally a men’s rights activist. My entire thesis for this pebble was meant to focus on the Cal Weaverification of luxury menswear fits, but I also live on the internet. This means that despite only being three seasons deep into Curb Your Enthusiasm, I’ve been tuned into the discourse surrounding that show’s finale and cultural legacy. What ties these two very disparate media properties together? Both have unintentionally become time capsules for the shifting trends in menswear.
In Ruth La Ferla’s recent NYT feature “Is Larry David the Most Unsung Fashion Critic of Our Time?” the writer notes: “His signature style — an obsessively considered amalgam of long-sleeve polo shirts, tan trousers, nondescript hoodies, blazers, and sneakers — seems meant to telegraph the status and breezy self-assurance of a Hollywood bigwig.” The listing of David’s wardrobe reads like a checklist for Weaver’s next big shopping trip. Both characters have the same style, yet they are diametrically opposed as class signifiers in their respective stories. What a difference 13 years makes.
In Crazy, Stupid Love, Weaver’s style is meant to enhance his broken masculinity; come one, come all to see this sad man in sad New Balance sneakers toting a sad velcro wallet. David, meanwhile, has always been a walking billboard for quiet luxury (onscreen and off); he’s a “Hollywood bigwig” whose baseball caps “have featured logos for the luxury island resort Amanyara and for Air Mail, a digital newsletter catering to an affluent crowd.” That’s by design. As a 2022 GQ profile divulged, David always had an iron grip on Curb’s wardrobe. He personally chose or approved every article of clothing — and then kept it all, “from blazers to socks, creating a seamless visual loop between Larry and the character he calls TV Larry.” The pendulum of menswear has swung to the side of relaxed silhouettes and dadcore comfort, the embrace of Cal Weaver and Larry David on menswear moodboards has signaled that the biggest sartorial flex is looking like you don’t care at all.
04) the cal weaverification of menswear memes
Trying to uncover the origin of a meme feels like the whipping scene in The Da Vinci Code (unnecessary suffering, lots of pain, but kind of thrilling). And trying to explain a meme feels like I’m living the embodiment of Steve Buschemi in that 30 Rock scene. Armed with only my advanced googling skills and a hyperfixation that I should have psychiatrically evaluated, I set off on a journey to find the origins of a menswear meme that has been doing a sit-in on my brain folds for weeks. On November 17, 2020, the following image was uploaded to a site called iFunny.
Yes, the caption does read: “A$AP Carrell - Oversized T (looks like recent Yonji but I'm not sure which collection its actually from) + the most faded raws of all time + striking NB (on that lunarcore wave p/ sure those are boots) Goosey is looking euphoric lol buisness cazual tryna be edgy good for all situations green trousers elfmode fucker get out.” 243 days later, on July 18, 2021, the user VERSACEiCE uploaded a more palatable version to the same site. A day later, it got posted to the IG account @patheticfashion, and the rest is fashion history.
Look, I know that menswear meme accounts regurgitating the same content for years aren’t real life, but doesn’t it feel like men are a bit freer to care about their fits these days? Fellas, it’s not gay to spend $3,500 on Yohji Yamamoto ss21 oversized jeans anymore (it is still fiscally irresponsible, though, just fyi). This particular meme is a perfect encapsulation of how much the pants clock has shifted in the past few years, but the image itself also has legs. No pun intended. I dug into its history and found iterations of it on a politics joke subreddit, a watch meme account, a programming humor site, a Chicago sports podcast meme account, and a Facebook page that sells leather wallets in Mansfield, Texas. Ah wait, sorry. It’s also appeared on the Facebook page for Sack Sack, a Florida-based merchant selling powdered testicle deodorant. Have I mentioned how much I love the internet?
05) “for now I will stretch out my hand, that I may smite thee who dare wear scrunchy pants”
To cap off all the pants talk, I wanted to get something off my chest that weighs heavily on my soul. I cannot believe I have to say this in 2024, but let’s get into it...
Unless you are a toddler literally shitting in a diaper and learning to walk, you should not have scrunchy elastic on the bottom of your pants. You are almost certainly not a professional athlete, don’t own a dojo, and aren’t a bike messenger, so let’s cut the shit. People should not have to be told to stop wearing pants that literally look like they are fucking sized-up baby clothes. This style of pants is indefensible and, frankly, offensive to both the wearer and anyone (me) who has to see you wearing them. I see adults wearing these toddler trousers often because not only do I live in Berlin, the worst-dressed city in Europe and perhaps the entire world, but I also reside in Friedrichschain, a neighborhood where good taste died decades ago, and cringe reigns supreme.
I can’t pinpoint when, exactly, this trend began to proliferate, but I can say that it’s as harmful to society as Disney Adults (unsurprisingly, one of the larger contingents of people who prop up this horrible sartorial choice). I understand that people want to be comfortable, but if you step out of your house in an item of clothing that matches that of a literal baby, you should pay reparations for the mental anguish you are causing to those around you. Your pants are nasty **.
** Disclaimer: If we are friends and you have worn this style of pants around me, I don’t think you are nasty. Yes, I am still judging you, but I was taught to hate the sin and love the sinner. **
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