Do you remember when they came?
Do you remember 2004? I believe you do. Everybody does. They were suddenly everywhere. Cheap Monday, J Brand, Topman. Skinny jeans from Stockholm, Los Angeles, London. They came out of nowhere. Did you go and buy a pair? I did. 7 for All Mankind. I spent a week’s worth of work-study and restaurant pay on jeans that hugged my legs so tightly I could barely get them on, fashionable denim that didn’t much go with the rest of my American Eagle wardrobe. These are big legs, mind you: lean and strong, but thick, and on a 5’5” frame a little slimming couldn’t’ve hurt. I spent the next decade trying to find slim pants that actually fit. Wondering if yoga could slim the legs. Wearing more shorts. Destroying crotches.
When I put on the Club Monaco 5-Pocket Twill Pant ($120) this month I looked around for witnesses. I shook the hand of the store employees. I thanked everyone for their contributions. These pants were downy soft but structured, slim but with room around all the key muscle groups, elastic but not in a silly way, available in all manner of waist-inseam combinations, ideal three-season weight, perfect with a blazer or a tee. I thought: holy shit, are we men who are generously endowed, limb-wise, finally out of the woods? By god, we are.
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