The curse of low-rise pants

Image courtesy of Club Monaco twitter.

Image courtesy of Club Monaco twitter.

A few months ago, a younger friend of mine asked me for some suit shopping advice. I accompanied him to Kingpin’s Hideaway, one of my favourite spots in Toronto for vintage menswear and helped him find an excellent two-piece tweed suit. On the peg it looked his size but when he tried it on the pants hung down really low in the crotch and bunched up at the ankles. He stood there looking dishevelled and confused.

“They’re supposed to sit at your natural waist,” I told him, “you have to hike them up.” When he lifted the waistband to its proper position, he was transformed: the pants hung cleanly off his waist, elongating his legs, and the cuffs sat just perfectly on his shoes. “This feels weird,” he told me, “all this fabric around my belly.” And I realized that this guy had lived his entire 30 plus years only wearing low-rise pants.

This photo was used to mock "high-waisted" pants. But by contrasting the ridiculous with the well fitting, I don't think it proves the point.

This photo was used to mock “high-waisted” pants. But by contrasting the ridiculous with the well fitting, I don’t think it proves the point.

Before you accuse me of longing for the age of monocles and top hats, natural-waisted pants (also called “high-waisted”) are not an affectation of the past that have had their day. Pants that sit at the natural waist are just that: natural. They are most flattering for most men, if they are tailored correctly. They also work best with tailored jackets, so that when the jacket is buttoned, you don’t get that unfortunate triangle of shirt sticking out the bottom. That only serves to distract from where people are supposed to be looking: your face.

Natural-waisted pants did not pass from favour because they didn’t work. Instead, they were swept out to sea by the tsunami that is jeans. Traditionally cut low and sitting at the hips, by the 1980s more and more pants were being cut like jeans. Eventually, low-rise became so ubiquitous my friend grew up never wearing pants that fit as they should. And as he ages, chances are he will look worse and worse if all his pants are low-rise.

linen-naturalwaist

Natural-waisted linen suit. You can’t even tell I have a belly.

The jean cut looks best on young, slim figures. (Then again, so do natural-waisted pants). As your figure matures and weight starts to appear in the middle, low cut pants only push this bulge out further. Natural-waisted pants help to smooth the transition from the torso, over the belly, and to the legs. As a sartorially minded friend often says “your abdomen should be in your pants, not in your shirt.”

club-monaco

This issue has reached absurd proportions, literally, in combination with the other obsession of our age: short jackets. The poor fellow above has been stretched like Armstrong by Club Monaco. The short jacket means the button is placed much too high. Then, with the low-rise pants, he is cut into three. The gentlemen below, on the other hand, are sporting a more classic look. With their well-fitting jackets and natural-rise pants, they have are only two zones: torso and legs. Which leaves them looking well proportioned and so handsome you can’t look away.

Chad-Park-and-Gilbert-Yoo

[Photo via Subskin tumblr]

To be fair, all of these men are quite fit. However, while a bit of weight would hardly be noticeable in traditional proportions, with ol’ stretchy there we would see nothing but belly.

Another side effect of only wearing low-rise pants is that most guys don’t know how to wear anything else. Look at this unfortunate example from the 2015 Met Gala featuring the usually sartorially resplendent George Clooney:

Oh George.

Oh George.

Formal wear pants should fit at the natural waist. George let his slip down to his hips, because that probably felt “better.” To fill the gap, he pulled his waistcoat down to – properly – cover the waistband of the pants. However, this destroyed the symmetry of the outfit, leaving a huge white band of waistcoat (which, if the pants were at the waist, would not even poke out beneath the ends of the jacket). Not only that, the pants now hang low and loose in the crotch and bunch up on his shoes, instead of falling smoothly. What I find particularly depressing, however, was that none of the event’s “fashion experts” even noticed.

Pleats. Live with it.

Pleats. Deal with it.

I’m not saying that all pants on all guys should sit at the natural waist, but neither should all pants sit at the hips. If we really do live in an age of sartorial freedom, then we should let our body shapes and natural proportions guide our style choices, not fashion and trends.