There are no good pants.
The last Pants Day was 330 days ago. I checked my credit card statement to confirm this. It was a Sunday in the middle of June. The weather was lovely — not too sunny, not too hot. The weather station in Central Park recorded a high of 71º. It was a perfect day to be doing anything else at all.
A brave friend, understanding that my behavior on Pants Day is not all that different from a cat being taken to the vet in a cage, had agreed to accompany me on the journey to SoHo, land of the pantmongers. Something was wrong with the subway, so I biked the last twenty blocks and primed myself with rage over cars parked in the bike lane (a plague upon them!). I arrived — as I almost always do on Pants Day — in a fury.
Pants Day is the worst day of all because Pants Day is the day that I spend a sickening amount of money on something that I know I will despise for as long as I own it. This is not to say that I am one of those wingnuts who think we should all be walking around without pants and drinking kombucha every day — quite the contrary — but I do think that in a society where most people wear pants every day, we would have figured out how to make and distribute them properly. Pants Day reveals that this could not be further from the reality of the situation.
For all of its faults, a person has to respect the great variety produced by the pants industry. The visitor to SoHo is liable to find pants available in hundreds of styles and colors and sold with various types of manufactured wear and tear. Astonishingly, not one pair is worth purchasing. The buttons are sewed on wrong, the belt loops are spaced improperly, the pockets are the wrong shape, or the material is too stretchy. (Pants should not be stretchy. People lose their morals if they are comfortable all of the time.)
I should be able to own exactly one type of pant and it should last for multiple years. It should look as acceptable in church after three years as it does at a party during its first week. It should be insulating enough to wear around in a blizzard but still a reasonable choice for a hot summer day (I refuse to purchase new shorts because clothing that you can only wear on weekends three months out of the year is a shameless money grab, and self-righteousness is far more important to me than breathability). The pants should be a dark color. They should be easily washable with other clothes and should not have to go to the dry cleaner. They should not wrinkle. They should keep their shape.
A batch of pants acquired on Pants Day 2018 seemed like the perfect solution: waterproof, stain-resistant, and well made. Then they lost all sense of shape and began to look like sweatpants after just two years. My father, who got his own pair of the same pants, also observed that they were too slippery and caused napkins placed in one’s lap at meals to slide onto the floor.
I have owned exactly one pair of pants that I ever enjoyed: a pair of proper Carhartts that I purchased at a Tractor Supply Company when I had a maintenance job during breaks from college. They were indestructible. The knees survived cumulative miles of crawling on concrete and, even though they were probably held together more by paint and silicon caulk than by stitching at the end, they were indestructible (if not exactly fashionable).
I fear that I could not buy those pants today if I wanted to. I overheard a man some time ago lamenting the fall of Carhartt as we waited in line at the Trenton, MI post office, the term “hipster” dripping off of his tongue with a disdain verging on vitriol. Perhaps he was right. As the L train rumbles along under Fourteenth Street, a Carhartt beanie is now a good indicator of who will stay on the train after First Avenue and continue into Brooklyn. A friend related to me a story from a recent trip of hers to C*lifornia when she, a former Michigander, had excitedly pointed out Carhartt’s Detroit origins to someone wearing one of their garments. “Oh,” the wearer had replied, “I thought they were from L*s Ang*les.”
It was with this history in mind that I began my desperate search on Pants Day 2021, dipping into and out of stores filled with people settling for mediocrity. At one point, in a moment of desperation and panic when I saw the line for a fitting room at a Uniqlo, I hissed “I can’t take another second of this!” to my poor friend, set down a heap of assorted clothing on a shelf, and ran out onto the street like a SCUBA diver with an empty tank.
I ended up finding pants that were, at the time, very exciting (despite the thoughtless spacing of the belt loops that put too much strain on a single loop on the back and should have served as a warning). I decided on a pair in black and a pair in navy blue and, overcome by what can only be explained as madness, a third pair in a slightly lighter shade of blue.
In a final insult from SoHo, the pants salesman explained to me that the store did not actually sell pants but rather showed them off and then assisted customers in having them dispatched from a warehouse in New Jersey. This is classic pants industry: ceaseless innovation in service of worsening the human condition.
It is in this same spirit of innovation that the pants I purchased last Pants Day are no longer available. It is not that I would buy them again. They have completely worn out, the strain of life in an office chair unbearable to the fabric. A quarter-size hole has worn into the rear pockets of two pairs and the belt loops broke even after multiple reinforcements from the dry cleaner. This particular model of pant has been replaced with what the manufacturer calls the “2.0” version. Rather than adjusting for the earlier faults, the chief differences are that the button is flimsier and the fabric is stretchy now.
This, to an outsider, is what seems to go on in the fashion world. When They aren’t making an outfit for the Mayor to wear to a gilded age-themed Met Gala (driving home the metaphor before his landlord-choked Rent Guidelines Board cranks up stabilized rents a few days later) or producing contradictory guidance on pleats or telling you that your shorts are “too long” and you have to buy new ones (never!), They are working on the grail: a single-use pair of stretchy, stretchy horrible pants. They will not rest until They have ensured that every day is Pants Day and I have descended into madness in the streets of SoHo, left to my despair.
Madness and despair — as Pants Day 2022 draws near and the dress pants in the closet beckon as the final backstop — seem indeed to be the likeliest outcome.
Distractions
Things I have been reading, watching, and listening to this week.
Scenes from the Illinois Governor’s Office from @anacaprara on Twitter (threaded version).
When I worked in the Michigan Legislature, I started a state government aesthetic Twitter thread. I still do not know how to define “state government aesthetic” other than the classic “you know it when you see it.” Perhaps it’s the kind of thing that comes from what I can only call “palatial austerity” combined with a mysterious hint of anonymous personal autonomy within vast institutions. My thread consisted of weird web designs, the asset tag on the tape dispenser, and my desk telephone with no five button.
This week, I was outdone by a staffer in the Illinois Governor’s office who is documenting their office in Chicago’s James R. Thompson Center during their final week there. My favorites include the Death Plant (note the attached asset tag) and the bizarre art(?) collection.
“What Things Cost Now” by Eli Grober in the New Yorker.
“A house now costs the most money you’re possibly willing to pay for a house, plus a hundred thousand dollars.”