A note on pants
I am notoriously opposed to wearing pants. Lately I’ve spent an absurd amount of time thinking about pants and my relationship to them. Regardless of the weather or the occasion I will 9 times out of 10 reach for a skirt or dress before I subject my legs to the confines of separation only offered by pants. My friend Julia is a big fan of pants and I deeply admire her for it. She has the kind of style that looks easy, but always intentional and polished. Sometimes, usually in the winter, I wish I was a less complicated dresser and felt comfortable wearing jeans and a hoodie but I just don’t. I’m not entirely sure where my disdain for pants stems from. If I had to guess it’d be either a result of private school where I had to wear a tunic or kilt, or some self imposed, righteous statement I decided to make against the skier and skater boys I grew up with. Love the skaters <3. The first time I hiked a mountain I was five and I wore a blue mini skirt, white shirt with a pink butterfly and white platform Skechers. I still remember all the granola men telling my parents it was ridiculous they let me wear that on a hike.
Back in Canada in the winter you drive everywhere. The city I’m from is the definition of urban sprawl and my privileged ass cannot fathom having to rely on the shitty public transit for everything in -50. New York is different, you walk everywhere. Even if you take the subway you still end up spending a significant amount of time walking outside. This makes skirts in winter trickier. Over the past 27 years I’ve become a fleece tights zealot, but I also hate how opaque they are. I feel like there’s probably something of note that I am most comfortable when my legs are at least partially exposed. I also hate wearing leggings to workout, the exception is running outside in the winter. My legs were the only part of my body that I’ve never had an issue with body image-wise.
While going through my google docs writing this, I found an old document one of the former writers at Man Repeller made last year compiling all her favorite pants for winter. I can’t remember if I liked any of them at the time, I didn’t buy any so probably not, but looking at them now I’m just bored. It’s not that I’m judgemental towards people who wear pants, that would be fucking ridiculous, I just genuinely do not feel like myself when I wear them. I think a lot of people think it’s silly how much I obsess over the way clothes make me feel, or dictate my mood, but I’ve always been that way and honestly don’t understand how people don’t have the same visceral reaction to outfits as me. I think it’s similar to my inability (possible refusal) to understand how people elect to completely copy outfits from tiktok. I look at a lot of images on Instagram for outfit inspiration, so I’m a total hypocrite. I think this is more common in New York than anywhere else, but in the summer there were only like six outfits I would see girls wear, and I honestly found it kind of scary. My biggest fear in life (aside from being murdered or kidnapped) is to lose my sense of self, and my sense of self is completely tied into my personal style. I feel like my staunch resentment of tiktok fashion makes me come off as super bitchy and judgmental but it makes me sad that so many people would rather wear something chosen by other people, and conform to what is deemed acceptable, than look different, experiment and run the risk of wearing a bad outfit. I wear A LOT of bad outfits. For example, right now I’m wearing medium wash Levi’s ribcage jeans and a white Ganni x Comme Tees tshirt. Love the shirt, hate the pants.
