High Rise, Going Straight and the End of Too Tight

Nearly all of the cool stuff I had before I was 25 belonged to my father or my elder brother who turned his own 25 in ’72 when I was just 15, which also happens to be the same year that I stole his Schott Perfecto and raided his closet for some well-worn Levi’s 501s.  My father had a trunk of khakis and shirts from the War and his later Madman period when I was born.  I figured I could make a clean getaway before either of them noticed I'd raided the ark of the covenant.  That Schott jacket was later stolen from me in a bar.  Karma.  What goes ‘round comes ‘round.  Those wide chinos that were Pop’s I wore into college in ’75: he never commented on the pilferage but I am sure he noticed.

 

So speaking of which, finally.  I noticed this past year mainstream makers like JCrew and Todd Snyder have finally brought sorta’ almost not really yet straight denim and chinos into their current offerings.  It’s been all tapered all the time, if you haven’t noticed.  You know the tide has at last changed when the companies that order hundreds of pairs are advertising, as has Simon the Permanent Style dude and others are saying, that trouser trends are headed to wider and straighter.  Long live some decent straight pants, I say.  

 

Don't get me wrong, I’m not dissing your tapers or even your skinnies if that’s your taste.  You go, girl. Whatever floats thy boat etc.  However, I do think that a man with a Medicare card who is not already a member of The Rolling Stones should not be wearing skinny pants.  That may be an indecently normative judgment but there’s stuff younger guys should take from older guys without back talk, whether or not you agree.  And to other old dudes like me, let me tell you: it’s downright unseemly to insult the world showing off yer chicken legs and flaggy sagging butt like you’re some sort of peeping Tom stretching over the window frame to see what he can see.  Just no. (I have all sorts of age-appropriate ideas about clothes, but we can talk about that another time.)

 

Back to fit and change.

Somehow tight tapers look almost acceptable on younger fellas though it seems a decade since we’ve seen anything but everyone in very tight clothes, and especially men in pants.  Was it Daniel Craig’s Bond in those too small Tom Ford suits that did this to us all?  Casino Royale was 2006 but this skinny pants thing seems to have started even before that.  We do know that Bond’s too tight suits meant to tell us that he is very tightly wound and not in a good way.  Vesper understood this when she said to him, “There are dinner jackets and then there are dinner jackets.”  She didn’t choose one as tight as his suits.  I hope you noticed.

 

So skinny pants, still the norm as I walk the streets of New York and the college campus where I work, are as ubiquitous as sneakers---very few men wear decent shoes unless they have to, much less good boots---and fewer still none in suits, care for a straighter, even slightly wider traditional look.  There’s Ivy but that’s its own thing.  It still seems to me that it’s Bond 2006 and at worst is worse yet.  American men don’t seem to notice or care like my father and his whole generation that dressed as well as they could even when they were broke. How you dressed was then both a signal of dignity and a call for respect.

 

Somewhere around 2007 I found the Japanese selvedge makers and then Iron Heart who has been making a straight fit, close to those ‘72ish Levi 501s since I got into mine.   Iron Heart says their 634 model is “loosely based on a 1966 Levi’s 501” which more or less matches my first pairs.  Their 1955 fit is my favorite because it has even less taper.  In my size 34 that straight fit 634 model translates to a front rise of about 11 inches, a rear rise of 15.7, with the thigh a not toooo tight 13.4 and the knee (9.8) to hem (9.3) small enough to create almost straight silhouette.

 

But I don’t remember any of my jeans as a kid sitting that low in the front.  Anything under 11 inches is certainly a low rise and on a comparably sized pair of Pure Blue Japan in their most popular fit called Slim Tapered, we get a 10.7” rise and much smaller numbers all the way down to the 7” opening at the hem (on a 34 to measure apples to apples).

 

If all of these numbers are too boring let’s make it plain: these PBJs are some very slim jeans and that hem is going to be particularly unfriendly to pulling over an Engineer boot.  If t he jean barely makes it over a cowboy boot, it will almost certainly decide the entire leg contour.  I supposed that’s a look.  When I look at the gypsy cowboy style that Stevie Van Zandt makes a daily driver andnot just on stage with the band, he’s flowy on top but pretty much skin-tight from the waist down.  Rock stars get to do what they want.  I suppose you do too. But not many of us are as actually cool as Little Steven, so it might be a good idea to reconsider.

 

Now a true higher rise is a lot higher than what most are calling high rise.   Higher rise should come to about the base of your navel or just meet it.  On my 34, that’d be about 13”, which is enough to really change the look of the pants in comparison to say those 11” riser Pure Blue Japan Slim Tapers.  The back of a high rise would be more in the neighborhood of 17.5” and once you get to the hem you’re at the open end of 10” or 10.25”. 

 

It’s a very different look than the slim, low rise, tapered look that has been all that.  And I tell you, it’s not too baggy.  I don’t want to look unkept.  I am too old to be baggy pants skater (with love to those guys, for sure).  It also keeps fair distance from a cosplay 40s look if you tone down other the period-correct complements.  I like Jack Dawson right outta’ Titanic’s steerage in 1914 as much as the next guy but there’s a fine line between vintage and a bit too much costume.  You choose.   

 

Some very good boot review guys are still on the tapered trend, which only means that my considerably higher rise, wider all the way down, and never less 9.5” hem opening (all on a 34 waist tag) makes me the outlier.  It’s not that I am defying the current fashion much less trying to influence it.  And my style is never about putting comfort first.  This comfort-first priority might be the worst of all style advice.

 

Comfort is complacency and much like contentment: almost always an obstacle to self-improvement, and always when it comes to thinking and learning.  What doesn’t discomfort at least some teaches you far less about life. Even the man most comfortable in his skin and clothes can’t be choosing them because he puts comfort first.  He chooses them to tell the story he needs to tell---sometimes because he has to, other times because he can, it’s who he wants to be.  The argument that comfort comes first in clothing makes as little sense as thinking Shakespeare needs to be easier to love.  Better things in life have to be worked for.

 

Style also naturally has to meet certain parameters and expectations----we are after all social creatures and attend to implicit codes, no matter how free we think we are, we’re all playing by norms, even in our new post-pandemic.  When you get to fly your freak flag, dress to make your point.  I have that privilege at work where there are no codes but what the professor decides.  I not only get to be me, I get to make a statement if anyone cares to notice.  When you don’t need to round off the edges, that’s when you make style points telling your story.  Everything you say and do tells your story and don’t think clothes are somehow the exception.

 

So I don’t wear higher rise, wider jeans to be comfortable.  I wear them because that look is my story and in my case, it has historical hooks.  Jeans have never been better made than they are today and there are chinos out there, like The Real McCoy’s 1941 or Buzz Rickson 1942 Early Military Wide Leg, that look, feel, and wear like the ones I took from my father’s chest of drawers. But if you like a higher rise and wider straight fit because you just do, then that too is your story.  When I see Gene Kelly dancing in wide khakis cuffed short with white socks and black shoes, I wish I were a millionth as cool---and that look has never gotten old to me.  

If you’re not tall---and I am not tall, coming in at just just 5’10” maybe---then a higher rise with a shorter jacket will make you look taller.  Even tall guys like to look taller, so there’s that too.

 

Let’s land this plane: trouser fashion is swinging oh so slowly from this long era of near-pencil tapers to slightly more open, straight fits.  As far as I am concerned, that can’t happen too soon.  I did my stint in tapers in 2006 but as soon as I found there were newhigher and widers out of Japan’s heritage scene in 2007—well, my whole being had a sigh of relief: I realized I could be that guy, again, which happens in my case to be the guy I was when I was still stealing from my brother’s closet and my father’s old trunk.  You be you but I’d lay down a Jackson you’d look waaay cooler a bit straighter and wider than you might be thinking, even now.