We’re big pants people!
I have a pair of jeans that shrunk vertically, so they’re just a centimetre or two too short. Justine suggested that I roll them up and wear them as “three-quarter length jeans”.
I replied, “What?”
I know that the ladies are permitted to wear calf length pants (called “capris” or somesuch nonsense). But gentlemen? I doubt it.
She assured me that it is done. Boys can wear three-quarter length jeans, as long as they are wearing sandals without socks.
For the subsequent week, I found that she was correct. It is not only appropriate, but popular. There are three-quarter length jeans everywhere. Like with man bags, I just haven’t been paying attention for a while.
The next step is to start complaining about what kids are wearing these days.
The last step is when my “classic” jeans and T-shirt becomes as démodé as today’s “classic” polyester pantsuit.
Damn.
GKarlsen
Holy Smokes!!!
Could you ask your style gurus if it’s still okay to wear torn, frayed and stained clothing? I am poor and unable to buy new clothes, so I am forced to rely increasingly on worn-out shirts, pants and socks (and the less said about my underwear, the better!)
Ah yes, the almost pants. The very nearly pants. The not quite pants. The not entirely not pants. Pants, sort of. Pants-ish. Mostly pants. They’re pants…right?
I, personally, don’t believe that they are pants. To my eye they are some weird pants/shorts hybrid and I don’t mix with that sort of garment.
If you can’t commit to either full length pants or below-the-crotch-and-above-the-knee shorts then you are exceedingly wishy-washy. A desire to wear this 3/4 length tragedy is proabably a character flaw.
I would suggest that Justine, like many(every) women I know, is giving you advice on how to be “fashionable”. I believe that this desire to “fashionize” is rooted somewhere in the DNA of women. My daughter puts an outfit on a doll, plays with her for a while, changes the outfit, doesn’t like it, changes it again, plays some more and then changes the outfit three or four more times. I believe that girls/women just get bored looking at the same clothes for too long. Consequently, they have created the fashion industry so that they can play Barbies on an inter-continental scale.
If you look at it, fashion just goes around in circles. One year wide pants are “in” and then the next year super slim pants are in. A few years later, the wide pants are back. Fashion isn’t improving clothes over time, it’s just changing them to please the womenfolk. These 3/4 abominations aren’t better than shorts or big pants, they’re just different, a change.
I think if men were allowed to be in charge of apparell there would only be functional improvements to clothing. The new fall line in Paris would boast “new improved pockets”, “quieter cords”, “shirts that showed 75% less pit stain”. That and they would come in: dark blue, grey, green, red, black, white and stripes (of the preceeding colours). A man would find a pair of pants that fit well and be allowed to buy nine pairs of them to last him for the next five years. A man’s clothes would be his friend and see him through, year after year after year; comfortable and constant.
What really irks me is that the people who seem to get to decide what is acceptable fashion-wise each year are so obviously full of extract of horse. “Oh, John-Paul’s collection this year is simply divine. His couture is brilliant. I love his nouveau riche pants.” What? Of course they can’t say that the clothes look really weird because if they were to point that out then maybe other folks would stop and think about it for a minute and then maybe they wouldn’t have a cushy, ridiculous job as a fashion critic anymore.
Oops I’ve run on again.
Terse Version:
No wear “three-quarter length jeans”.
Alternate Ending:
Go nuts! I’m going to wear a 2/3 width shirt tomorrow.