Pity us poor blokes when it comes to shopping from the waist down. Never has the American axiom, ‘we all put our pants on one leg at a time,’ proved less true. Trousers, once the great leveller of society, are fast becoming a fashion minefield.
Baggy trousers are now the order of the day and if you are putting together your autumn wardrobe you might have noticed the same. Men’s trousers have ballooned, quite literally. On a recent trip to Marks & Spencer to buy some straightforward office clothes, I was instead met with rails of pantaloons which could happily double as wind socks.
Even in reassuringly safe Marks and Sparks a perusal of their wares introduced me to such horrors as the ‘barrel cut’ which seems to be perfect for anyone wanting to smuggle a pair of endangered armadillos where their thighs should be, less so for a meeting at Pret A Manger. Alternatively, I could have gone for the ‘Italian boot cut moleskin’ in white, maybe for when I’m teaming smart chinos with steel toecaps on a building site, but it doesn’t exactly work with my no brown in town black work slip ons.
The drawers debate has now gone nationwide after Gary Neville was shifted off the couch and made to parade his wide legged chinos by his fellow Sky Sports pundit Jamie Carragher on Saturday Night Football. ‘I tell you what, I think they’re pretty cool,’ he announced to roars of laughter from the studio and the strains of Madness’ Baggy Trousers. It was all a bit less G-Nev more G-Unit, as the former England right back unwittingly revealed the current battle for the soul of men’s fashion.
Apparently us men over 40 are all now locked in to a fight to the death between ‘Dudes and Dads,’ the Nevilles versus the Carraghers. On one side you have the hipsters with their clashing colours, flappy clothes, short shorts and loud shirts, and on the other you have the fans of sober lines and classic cuts. It’s Agassi versus Federer, Harry Styles versus Zayn Malik, even King Charles versus Felipe VI of Spain come to think of it. ¡Viva España!
That baggy trousers have become the latest line in this battlefield is also because unfortunately for us on Team Dads, Big Fashion has decided that 2026 is the year when ‘the 90s are back’ and so every brand at the same time has decided that what all of us men really, really, want is trousers which could sail a small boat and which wouldn’t look out of place in a 1990s skateboarding magazine.
I’ve checked and even the current style icons are struggling to pull this one off
Presumably though, it is called boot cut for a reason, and there is one small catch in the Dudes’ dominance of high-end to middle market menswear. I appreciate there’s only so much you can do with a pair of legs and designers have got to have some fun with their job, but as far as I can see, a pair of pointy black brogues really needs a tapered leg. Otherwise the effect tends to be less striding alpha male, and more of mimsy little Victorian feet beneath a crinoline.
I’ve checked and even the current style icons are struggling to pull this one off. The normally reliably hip A$AP Rocky is getting nil points for the baggy beige chinos and pointy blacks he exhibited in Paris. I’ve noticed Oscar Isaac and Pedro Pascal have topped best-dressed lists exhibiting the tiny feet, big trousers look, but presumably this is voted for by the same fashionistas foisting this baggy future on us, and anyway they get out of bed most mornings looking like Oscar Issac and Pedro Pascal.
Despairingly, I wandered on to Peter Jones to see if the Wu Tang Clan’s takeover of the middle classes was complete. Sure enough Levi’s has turned into a sort of multi-coloured denim curtains shop underneath the tagline ‘Keep it Loose’. The nice sales rep from Kiwi brand Rodd & Gunn pointed out a boot cut mannequin, ‘That’s about as tapered as you’re getting this year.’
Oh well. If you can’t beat them, join them. ‘He thinks he’s Frank Worthington,’ Jamie Carragher guffawed at Gary Neville back in the studio. I admit I had to google who Frank Worthington was, and I mean, phwoar. But getting me to look like Frank Worthington would at the minimum involve my hairline going on a round trip to Turkey and the ability to grow a moustache. If upgrading my ‘silhouette’ and buying a pair of super-sized slacks gets me halfway there, maybe it’s worth it.
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