Recently, I have been growing an extremely hearty, yet expensive, affinity for trousers dated pre-2000s. What does this even mean? Excellent question. Whilst watching this man on the popular, vivacious and apparently controversial app, TikTok, I fell in love with trousers. This man makes videos to the same audio every time, showing off his stellar outfits. One thing remains true throughout every video: I seem to love the ones with trousers. He will display outfits as if he had jumped out of a time machine — a lengthy, sunburnt orange, leather duster with a bathroom tile, faded-shamrock, pair of green trousers and a white, orange and red striped shirt! Ooh, La La! Whether you are this man on TikTok, Harry Styles or some businessman from the ‘80s, you definitely know the world of trousers all too well, and if you are not, well, let us crack open the trousers egg!
Now, my name is Kelly and not Miriam Webster, but it seems as if there has been some distasteful ambiguity in how we categorize pants. If you had asked me a couple of years ago what trousers were, I probably would have uttered something along the lines of “Uh … British pants?” However, 18-year-old me would have been wrong and simply foolish! Connotatively, yes, trousers seem to be synonymous with pants. Does this beg the argument of: is a hot dog a sandwich? Are skirts trousers? Are you saying no? This is where my passion, wordiness and, at times, flare — Get it? — of my thoughts about trousers stem from
I dipped my little toes into the theoretical trouser pool back in the summer of ‘19. These trousers would have been personally? trousernally! insulted if you referred to them as plain “pants.” These pants eclipse formality and can be paired with any outfit. I bought these from a store based in Los Angeles named Big Bud Press. These leg-huggers have pleats at the top that give them an extra umpf of sophisticated-ness. Or maybe I am just trying to justify the price to myself, whatever it is. They are not as fitted as jeans or as baggy as cargo pants. These hug very tight around the waist and loose down to the feet. So, thusly, these cannot just be scooped into the category of lame, old pants!
There is a certain je ne sais quoi that comes with “Ah, I’m just gonna throw on my pants,” versus “I’m just gonna throw on my trousers!” Trousers just sound cooler. However, I cannot get past the fact that they sound so British. I assume some British guy was like, “Man, I hate these pants. I do like trousers, though!” and boom, that was that. After some, not-so-intense, research — a simple 5-second Google search — on Reddit, it turns out that British people, in fact, use the word pants! It’s short for pantaloons, and that makes a whole lot more sense than some British person randomly generating the word trousers. Apparently, to the very reliable source of Reddit, trousers are more of a slacks type of deal.
Each type of “pants,” and I use that word lightly, seem to give off different signals. Do you not believe me? Imagine you walk into your house after an excruciatingly irritating day at work, and you see your significant other in a kilt. You are on a roller coaster, and the person in front of you is wearing a tuxedo with dress pants. You are at the roller-rink and some man — who is not Santa — is wearing insanely large Santa Claus pants. I suppose the point of this seemingly passionate pants, article is that the pants are important, but it is more important to explore what pants have to offer us. Need to do some yoga or cannot seem to get yourself to put on jeans? Leggings. Wanna be a cowboy for Halloween? Jeans. Need to get famous on Tik Tok and have people write articles about you? Trousers! The world of pants is a crazy, beautiful, and bewitching sphere, it is time to explore it!