Find 12, ditch 10, buy multiples of 2
This always happens. You get into this period of transformation and try a lot of stuff out. Some of it works. A lot of it doesn’t. You’re picky. You stick with the good stuff and, in doing so, you transform again.
Who didn’t transform in 2020? I got rid of a lot that wasn’t working for me, from people to hard pants. When actual pants came back, they all left enough room for comfort.
For years my jeans were made by one guy in Japan, and they were tight enough to qualify as leggings in 36 states. I threw a pair on in 2023 and burst out laughing. My body changed, maybe? I changed. We all changed. They were preposterous, from an interest rate that was now thoroughly dead. They lasted 10 minutes on me. Now two decades of torched denim is balled up in the garage, waiting for the moment when I will sufficiently psychically release their existence enough to donate them.
So I needed new pants, like probably most of you. I had no idea what I was doing. I didn’t even know what was good. I kept my eyes open. I read Blackbird Spyplane like any self-respecting global citizen. I wrote down what might look good on me. I researched in New York, Paris, Tokyo, Lisbon, and Osaka. And then I bought a few pairs of pants, which I have spent the past two years absolutely flogging. No two pairs are from the same brand; heck, no two pairs are from the same country.
I took a mirror selfie in the elevator at Cité Radieuse in Marseille last year wearing orSlow fatigue pants that absolutely refuse to die and somehow look better over time. Last week someone sent me this meme, with a guy dressed approximately the same. Yes. This is it. I am the ideal pants guy now.
I fully expect to ditch half of these pants. Some will die on their own accord, because I wear objects hard. Others will fail to hit for me, and be relegated to the donation pile on their own accord. Or perhaps another apocalypse will occur, and we’ll all turn on this trend again. Regardless, there is no substitute for the process of wearing a thing, for lived experience in relationship to a thing, and so one must buy the thing and try.
I know I spend a lot of text thinking about how one must buy less, but there is a functional purpose to buying thoughtfully with the intention to cut later. In addition, there is a strong resale market for clothes like these now. I bought some of them used, and I can flip others later to give them new life to someone who might appreciate them more.
Clothes are the sort of thing that is so intimate & expressive that there is functionally no substitute for them, no Wirecutter that you can rely on to tell you what to do. The whole point is to turn such communication into a creative act. After all, how are you going to know if you don’t try? Make mistakes, get some successes, and grow. The opposite would be to retreat to safety. That’s how you become boring. I’m many things, but I try hard to not be boring.