Or do what we did as kids. Walk the extra length off.
This is what happened to me, except in reverse order! I had the crotch rip (…while at work…) a year ago on one pair, last week a belt loop broke on my other pair. I am also fat, but I cut my super long hair around 15 years ago.
$15 Lee’s from Costco. Last a few years. Ditto the ten buck WalMart Wranglers. But I love me some high-quality denim jeans. Adverse to spending money and doing the legwork (ha!) to find my size.
I still insist on button fly 501s, but damn they are hard to find these days.
I used to be a button-fly 501 guy as well but haven’t seen them around in ages. No zipper to catch on your schmeckel!
I’m not sure how much money I’d have to have to not feel like a sucker buying $900 jeans, but it’s definitely a hell of a lot more than I have right now.
I know half the people here live in NYC or the Bay Area, so here is a place you can go to get your fix. We went to the PDX store yesterday.
I looked at a random pair of jeans on that website and saw this:
These jeans are made of unsanforized denim, when washed the denim will shrink .75" in the waist, 2" in the length (inseam), and approximately .3" in the thigh/knee/leg opening/rise. Please keep this in mind when choosing your size. The denim will also stretch in the waist up to 1" after approximately 30 wears.
How the hell are you supposed to wear these, if they shrink then stretch?!
This is exactly my take, but once again, Armando surprises and delights with awesome knowledge on some weird niche topic.
The general idea (which I hate) among denim enthusiasts is to buy very tight pants, shrink them down to insanely tight pants, and then wear them till they stretch out to “not-suffocating” while simultaneously wearing stress-fracture dye loss into them wherever the pants buckle under the strain of not consuming your legs entire.
Most denim will stretch out with a similar number of wears (and tighten back up slightly when washed and especially when dried). Raw/unsanforized is unusual in that it’s not pre-shrunk (to a size it won’t remain at, anyway).
The unwashed denim tends to contain an overabundance of, let’s say. . . nervously aboard indigo. It’s going to leap off the great ship SS Your Pants at a moment’s notice. Onto your couch. The wall you brush past. Your car seats. Your bedsheets when you sit down to put on your socks. Anything else that shares a wash with it the first 2-3 times through.
But now, you see, you are responsible for the wear pattern of indigo fade on your jeans, not some nameless, faceless spray nozzle in a Wangler factory! That weird white patch there on the thigh? That’s where my keys uncomfortably stab my thigh every day because my jeans are too tight. This worn crinkle in the crotch? That’s where my pants buckle and twist because they are too tight. These fingertip-shaped pale spots all along the waistline of the jeans? That’s where I must apply a vice-like grip everyday when shoving my bulk into these pants because they are too fucking tight.
Ahem.
I’ll again note that I thoroughly got the fuck off the raw denim fandom train very shortly after I got on. Probably because I was afraid of staining the train seats blue.
Less judgmental:
I like that raw denim hasn’t been jet-punished by cleaner-laden sprayers at the factory, and as a fan of really dark shades (deep blue pants 'neath my midnight black metal tees, yeeeee), it’s obviously got some appeal there. And as noted before, the quality differential for well-woven selvedge denim is not-insubstantial. I like the idea that a lot of these products are produced with care and respect for the men and women involved in the process. I don’t even mind paying extra for all that. I buy straight-leg and relaxed-fit styles (often, yes, with button flies – no more broken zippers for me!) that are comfortable and easy to wear from modestly prized brands and go right on about my day.
Cuz, you know, at the high end, there’s. . . fashion people.
Shudder
Raw denim is interesting, because for most casual wear, in the past…5(?) years or so there’s been a movement away from denim and into stretch denim blends, with like spandex or polyester.
These stretch blends are probably not as durable as high end denim…but they aren’t purely cheaper materials. The stretch has legitimate utility in both comfort and fit. After years of wearing just denim jeans (albeit cheap denim), I’m convinced these newer pants are actually better.
The newer blends feel better initially, but i think there’s something to be said for a pair of jeans that you break in yourself, that fit you perfectly, and that last forever.
Denim just doesn’t last like it used to though, so Armando, what kind of jeans have the same kind of durability of older Levi’s?
So, again, out of date info, so it’s possible some of these brands have fallen off (though most still make recommendation lists on /r/rawdenim and /r/malefashionadvice, it looks like, but I’ll generally stand by the above recs:
I’ve been pleased with the 501s I got way back when from Levi’s. Even if you’re not stepping up to M&C level, I’d say they’re still pretty dece all things considered.
You wear jeggings? I thought they were just for women. Do you wear men’s yoga pants as well?
Hilarious.
Gap (which I consider to be kinda basic standard clothes) advertises “with GapFlex” on their men’s jeans. Uniqlo uses a 2% spandex blend. Startups like Revtown advertise stretch nylon blends.
Then again, if your masculinity is so precious to you that you want to wear less comfortable pants, be my guest. Misogyny hurts everyone.
At my work we sell school logo hoodies with long sleeves and bare midriffs, which I think are bizarre. They’re not hot sellers, but still.
The Lee jeans I got at Costco have some stretch to them, and are the most comfortable pants I may have ever worn I think. For like fifteen bucks, $14.99 on sale or something.
I too am with @CLWheeljack. In fact, the men at a recent work meeting I attended started chatting about things during a break and one of the guys complained his pants were NOT the new stretchy kind and everyone lamented that we all love them. They aren’t quite like jeggings, which I consider leggings that look like jeans, but aren’t made of anything similar at all. What we are talking about are standard fitting jeans or workpants with the same cut and fit, but they stretch just a tad. You feel it in the waist, hips and rear end of the pants. MAJOR thumbs up, they flipping rock.
So throw your scorn if you want, but I’m very much on team jeggings.
When you think about clothing in general, the notion that something is “ridiculous” to wear is generally silly. Barring someone walking around with a sock on his dick or something similar, why wouldn’t we wear whatever is the most comfortable? There’s not really a good reason not to wear sweatpants around everywhere, other than “fashion” and “decorum.”
