Saturday, Fourth of July weekend, lakeside with friends.
Me, Im gazing at drifting clouds, wondering whats going on with pants.
We all have our ways of processing the world.
GIANT STEPSModel Angelina Kendall lives large in a tour de force of red, with high-waist trousers from Bottega Veneta. Photographed by Mikael Jansson,Vogue,August 2024.
The pastoral setting had put me in mind of Jonathan Andersons fall 2024 Loewe showits country-manor-through-the-looking-glass vibe.
This is a very incomplete list.
Anderson wasnt the only designer running the pants gamut this year.
Fall 2024 pants by (left to right) Toteme, Dries Van Noten, Loewe, and Chloé.
At Bottega Veneta, they came stovepipe, tulip shape, cropped flare, slouchy.
Chemena Kamalis Chloe debut ranged from knit short-shorts to fringed leather jeans that transformed into teardrops of chiffon.
Elsewhere, designersweredecisive: Sabato De Sarno, at Gucci, was all about shorts.
Fall 2024 pants by (left to right) Toteme, Dries Van Noten, Loewe, and Chloe.
What Im saying is, its pants chaos out there.
Those trousers laid a foundation.
The foundation has crumbled.
But maybe there is a path forwardand a pant to unite us all.
Explain the no-pants thing, I ask stylist Harry Lambert.
His client Emma Corrin had just appeared at the New York premiere ofDeadpool & Wolverinein a Nina Ricci leotard.
Lambert replies with a laugh.
That said, she likes to rock oversize, toothe dimension Lambert himself favors when getting dressed.
I remember feeling hot and self-conscious in those jeans.
Whycantthe world be other than it is?
What if wedidntwear pants?
The return of the skinny, meanwhile, is reactionary.
Its a bit of both, I suspect.
But the balance has gotten way out of whack.
Eventually, the bubble burst.
Fashion got more conservative, more uniform.
We were due that correction.
Instead, we got a total fashion collapse: COVID, and the reign of the sweatpant.
Seducing them via, variously, the radical, the familiar, the comfortably roomy?
One beneficiary of all this pants topsy-turviness is Frankie Shop founder Gaelle Drevet.
Apparently, every other fashion-y girl on the planet got the same memo.
If there was one pair of pants that works with everything, wed just carry that, Drevet says.
Whats broken can never be made whole.
Alissa Zachary is the founder of High Sport, best known for its buzzy kick-flares.
I exaggerate, but only just.
Sadly, I do not.
Basically, the High Sport kick-flare is a refined-looking pant that wears like a legging.
Its made of a proprietary cotton-Lycra knit formidable enough to hold a tailored-like structure yet soft enough to give.
The pants pull onno fussy buttons, zips, etc.and flatter a wide variety of body types.
A person looks dressed in them, but not in a peacocky way.
Who knows whats going on these days?
Im writing this in August, and anything could happen between now and this magazine landing on newsstands.
One thing Im sure of, though, is that a new worldiscoming.
Were already en route; the ship has left shore.
Maybethatswhat the no-pants thing is about: If youre heading into uncharted waters, its best to travel light.
