The year of the great big pants
Looks like this will be the year of great big pants.
While runway looks rarely take into consideration what everyday people would want to wear, the newest looks suggest that when it comes to slacks, the bigger the better. And by big, I mean voluminous not only in the leg parts of the pants, but big at the waist and dragging on the ground enough to allow for stilt shoes.
This was all good news to me as I began my spring shopping. Because of cancer treatment, my left leg is a bit thicker than my right leg, a condition that’s painful only when it comes to finding pants that will fit both legs. The skinny jean spell came and went without me, and don’t get me started on the whole athleisure fad – the one in which stretchy yoga pants wandered into the workplace as if they belonged there.
I wandered around some clothing stores this week to see what they had. Big pants were everywhere, filling racks with bright swaths of color. The only thing more jarring than a pair of high-waisted and pleated pants with legs that hang like a couple of shower curtains is that pair of pants in acid green pleather. A mannequin was wearing them with a smocked crop top that was festooned with birds of all kinds.
“Let me know if I can get you that in your size,” said the young worker as I struggled to refold a billowy pair of orange trousers I’d held against me for size.
“Like folding a fitted sheet,” I said, before finally wresting them into a squarish bundle and slinking away.
Apparently the designers believe we all will look snazzy this spring if we cut a silhouette like Gumby. You know how Maria Von Trapp fashioned those play clothes out of curtains? When this season is over, those of us who participated in the circus-tent-pant craze will be able to do just the opposite, and deck our windows with fabric formerly known as pants.
It must be challenging to be clothing designers these days, always having to push things forward in new ways. The new ideas always land on a certain body part. For years it was the midriff and the crop tops that showed it off. A few years ago we saw cold-shoulder tops, those dresses and shirts with the top part missing from the sleeves. Another trend this season is the dress that’s missing its lower back, something I discovered in a dressing room. Pulling it on, my head suddenly emerged through a hole I hadn’t planned for – not the neck hole but a gaping elastic opening at the back of the waist, causing the sleeves and bodice to hang in front of me like a deflated blow-up yard Santa.
Once I figured out what was going on and had my arms in the sleeves, I looked at myself in the mirror and decided: nice enough, so long as I never turned around. My lower back is not my best feature.
I also took a pair of big pants into the dressing room because, why not? Climbing into them was a breeze, which my left leg appreciated. I backed away from the mirror to study myself. I looked like a feather duster, or like I was competing in a sack race.
I carefully clipped the pants back on the hanger and abandoned them and the backless frock in the dressing room, and slipped out of the store – a little sad that I don’t have the body for these new trends, or the nerve.
Beth Dolinar can be reached at cootiej@aol.com.