Sell your skinnies. Oversized silhouettes are all the rage right now.
Long gone is the era of skinny pants. Designers are countering the skin-tight aesthetic with looser, wider-fit trousers, and some have taken it to an extreme: They’ve crafted bottoms that billow out at the hip, widen ever so slightly at the knee and run straight down toward the hem. But milder iterations prove more manageable for most men and should be an immediate add to your wardrobe.
However, the trend isn’t a sudden development. A year in sweatpants and other supple bottoms made us used to, arguably addicted to, comfortable clothes. How could we all go back to shuffling into skin-tight pants? We couldn’t. And shouldn’t. Switching from skinny to even straight-fit feels like quite the step, but it's worth the effort to go a bit wider.
Wide-leg pants are far easier to pull off than most people think. In order to look the most natural in them, keep the oversized fit consistent throughout your outfit. Wearing wide pants? Go with chunky shoes, a wide cardigan or hoodie overtop your wide T-shirt. You need to keep it consistent or else you risk toying with your proportions too much.
Most folks worry about wider clothing making them look heavy. But truthfully, a wide-fitting outfit that's consistently so from top to bottom will prove more flattering than skinny jeans or a skin-tight T-shirt, which squeeze and stick in all the wrong spots.
Although you'd expect a wide pant that flows out over your toes to be antithetical to showing off a pair of coveted kicks or kick-ass boots, relaxed-fit pants are actually perfect for footwear fans. If you wear skinny or even straight-fit pants, you have to worry about how the bottoms stack, a term for the way the fabric sits at your ankle. Wide-leg pants will cover some of your shoes, but there will still be plenty peeking out.
At the very least, you'll never need to worry about rolling or cuffing your pants ever again — I, for one, appreciate this newfound freedom.
