The Everything Pants
all you really need is one good pair of pants -gandhi
I never found a pair of pants that I just love. I like comfortable pants and clothes I can work in that I feel comfortable in. I don't really like to get dressed up. I like to wear the same thing every day and feel comfortable. It’s a fit, it’s a certain kind of feeling, and if they’re not right, which they never are, it’s a sadness. You know, it interrupts the flow of happiness. I’m working on it, believe me.
-David Lynch, 2021 for GQ
Like David Lynch, I have been searching for a good pair of pants my entire life. Pants have been my personal plague since I was a child revolting against denim. I didn’t like my legs feeling restricted by fabric, ensconced within woven shackles. I regularly showed up to school in Picture Day dresses because I reveled in the liberation of having free gams. I didn’t believe that I should accept the confines of harsh, rigid fabrications, live my days in discomfort for the sake of superficiality. I frustrated my mother endlessly with my preference for loungewear. I didn’t think beauty really needed to be pain when cotton sweatpants existed.
But at one point a couple years ago, I’d actually managed to overcome Lynch’s personal plight: I had indeed found the best and most perfect pair of pants I’d ever owned. That is, until I lost them in the fire that destroyed my apartment.
They were called the “Pammy Pants.” Using a Fashion Brand Company gift card two Christmases ago, I bought the Pammy Wide-Leg Linen Trousers off their site, one article from a line which paid tribute to Pamela Anderson and her barbed wire tattoo. The comfortable trousers were big and billowy, made of thick black linen and featuring silvery barbed wire embroidery lining the entire outer seams of both legs. I had purchased a size S, which proved to be a little big until one cycle at the laundromat and they had shrunk up around my ankles. Neutral-colored, they went with everything, and they could be styled with almost anything, too. I could wear them with a t-shirt, a hoodie, or a crewneck; a baggy sweater or a fitted one; a baby crop top or a blouse. I once wore them to a Midtown cigar lounge with a mesh long-sleeve overtop a lingerie bralette. A cigar lounge, a party, a second date, a chill night in. Most situations I found myself in, socially or otherwise, I could wear these pants to. I’d receive compliments on them constantly; the barbed wire detailing was subtle, simple, but unique. These were my “Everything Pants.”
During middle and high school, I did give in to Big Denim. I forced myself into skinny jeans AKA required uniform for wannabe scene kids (me). I wore these flesh-constricting torture pants not only in classic blues, but the various cheetah and zebra prints offered at Hot Topic. This was a horrible time in my life. I’d occasionally allow myself the kindness of a pair of sweatpants or a dress, as if I didn’t yet know that I actually had free will when it came to the clothes I wore. But at some point in between high school and college, I did make a crucial decision for myself, one which has dictated all my clothing choices ever since: that, like Lynch, I would always be comfortable. While I still want to look good, how I look matters less to me than comfort and functionality. Chloë Sevigny was once asked in an on-the-street video where she gets her style inspiration from, and she answered honestly, “the weather.” At the end of the day, I want exactly what Lynch wanted: I want a pair of pants that I can wear everywhere, for almost any occasion, and be comfortable in them. Dressed up or dressed down, I can wear these pants and look good with minimal effort.
The Pammy Pants were exactly these, and then of course I lost them last year. I rescued only three articles1 of Fashion Brand Company from the fire that destroyed my apartment, but I couldn’t find my precious Pammy Pants. They were somewhere in there, trapped underneath the wet mass that had been ejected forcibly from my closet, and the pieces that I’d managed to grab just happened to be on top of the heap. I had hoped to repurchase my Pammys, but they were no longer on the site. This was to be expected—FBC sells out and cycles through styles fairly quickly. Perhaps they’d be sold again someday; the owner, Penelope Gazin, tends to resurrect old styles and patterns from time to time. However, it’s extremely arbitrary, so who knows when or if they’d ever return. I didn’t feel like waiting and hoping to find them resold elsewhere in my size, either. Instead, I found what seemed like the perfect substitute: the exact same pants, in the exact same size, in a different pattern that I liked well enough.
Purchased last summer, these new pants just weren’t the same. I’d foolishly bought a size S expecting them to shrink up in the wash like my Pammy Pants had. And even though they were, by all accounts, the same fabric2, no matter how many cycles in hot water, whether at home, at my parents’ house, or at the laundromat, NOTHING would make these pants shrink. And because they would not shrink, they were just too big. The bulky inseam hung too low and would irritate my inner thighs if I wore them for even a couple hours. The fabric was quite heavy, and the waist was just loose enough on me that the weight of all the fabric tended to let gravity do its work. The pattern—named “Cayetana” due to its conception by Gazin’s mother of the same name—was gorgeous but busy, and consequently harder to match with. It was frustrating: I had a pair of pants in my closet that I wanted to love but never wanted to wear. A tailor would likely cost me a small fortune that I didn’t have. My other pants, which I liked less, were much less versatile during seasonal transitions, and I didn’t have the money to buy more. I was increasingly becoming hysteric and distraught every time I tried to put together a simple outfit. I felt untethered and lost without a reliable pair of pants to ground me.
In the months since attempting to rebuild some of my 10+ years of wardrobe catalogue that I lost, it has driven me to insanity with just how difficult it is to find a baseline GOOD pair of pants. Not that I didn’t already know it, but it’s exponentially more maddening when you no longer own any pants. If you’re a bottom-heavy girl like myself, the waist may fit but the butt is too tight, and if the butt fits then the opposite holds true for the waist. I don’t like an inseam that grazes my slit but one that’s too low will scratch at my thighs or give me “diaper crotch.” Ankle-length looks good only sometimes, but I’m short and pants often fall past my feet. Tight pants need to be offset by cozy fabric, and while the trend towards baggy fit has been a revelation for my taste, loose pants can’t stick to my coarse leg hair or be overly compromised by some passing static electricity.
Low rise is out of the question, unless the composition is otherwise extremely comfortable. My choice is always for high rise, but not too high. If the waistline goes too far past my bellybutton, I start to feel like Jonah Hill in that SNL parody of Her. And this doesn’t even get into the impossible reality that every single women’s retailer has a different definition of XS, S, M; 2, 4, 6; 26, 27, 28. A 26 from Everlane will drape my waist and thighs in a loving embrace, while the same size from Urban Outfitters will brawl against my PAWG ass. And sometimes pants that are comfortable with a quick in-store try-on aren’t the same during prolonged usage at home. I’ve discovered that I now experience a struggle I never anticipated after my apartment burned down: despite the fact that I know my tastes, it somehow feels harder to decide what clothes I truly like with no backlog to lean on anymore. I don’t really know how to fix this aside from trial and error. Hopefully, someday I will look in my closet and, suddenly, without realizing it, I will like what I see again.
I found a compromise with myself recently: I sold the substitute almost-Pammys for way too cheap on Depop, and coupled with some money I earned from selling my dining room table on Facebook Marketplace, I paid a $30 difference for another, better pair of pants in my correct size off the Fashion Brand Company website; far less than a tailor would have asked from me. They are almost exactly the same as my Pammy Pants, with some slight differences. While loose, they feature a straight leg as opposed to a wide leg fit, which I actually like a little better (less fabric flopping around). They’re an XS, so minimal shrinkage in the wash is no longer a worry. In place of barbed wire embroidery, two white racing stripes run down the outer seams of each leg, stitched onto the same thick black linen fabric—from the “Sporty Spice” collection. I expect I won’t receive as many compliments while wearing these pants. The style is otherwise conventional, where barbed wire embroidery was once elegant and distinct. But they’re comfortable, and versatile, and they go with everything. It feels like I’ve regained some small bit of zen.
David Lynch was right that not having a good pair of pants “interrupts the flow of happiness.” Right now, so much in my life feels outside of my control. The one thing I can control is that I own one good fucking pair of pants.
I only owned 15 articles of Fashion Brand Company but they totaled over $1K so I was ecstatic to be able to rescue even just three pieces.
I have no idea what they did but it’s very obviously not the exact same fabric, something changed in the fabrication to keep them from shrinking too much because my Pammy Pants shrank a truly gargantuan amount.
maybe its cheaper on denim, but I’ve had the waist of an almost perfect pair of jeans brought in for $50 aud (about $32 usd). blew my mind