NOW AVAILABLE: Don’t believe the mixed-length-pants hype

Ed's Note

There is a danger in reading too much into the signs and portents sashaying down the catwalks. You could be led to believe all sorts of things that are not likely to become an eventuality in our lives. I, for one, do not believe that the asymmetrical, one-legged trouser suit is ever going to be a thing. As much as Victoria Beckham and the folks over at Bottega Veneta would have us believe that the mixed-length-pants movement is coming our way and that we will all soon be sporting the sartorial equivalent of an existential crisis, I am just not buying it.

Yes, things feel out of whack and seriously unbalanced, but must we reflect the all-purpose mood swings brought on with every whiff of the news by demonstrating our own inability to pick a length and stick to it on the same pair of pants?

On the long and short of it, what does this fence-sitting pantaloon say about any of us? Are these designers asking us to vouch for both teams? The left and the right? I refuse — I am of the school of thought where form follows function and not my psychic discomfort as I try to make sense of the latest provocations from the north. And yet, fashion has always indulged those who wear their hearts on their sleeves, just like medieval knights jousting with their fair ladies’ colours pinned to their clanging metal Hazmat suits. And what am I if not utterly confused and discombobulated?

In confusing times like these, people get nostalgic. They hark back to things that feel more stable. The Gen-Z kids are all about the Noughties — those halcyon days when Harry Potter and Friends reinforced comforting narratives and homogenous pants. The early 2000s have the extra-special distinction of introducing the low-slung pant, where the Venn diagram of waistband and string panty met over a plumbing standoff.

I can’t even begin to interpret the ever-receding hipster — was it a testament to the rollicking new millennium that speaks to the end of history, along with an end to the need to hold up your trousers? In retrospect, it is easy to make calls about the hidden depths of meaning in cultural artefacts and the fleeting fashion of the time. Until it rears its plumber’s crack again.

To try to make sense of it all is to feel as though we are sifting through the ashes of ancient Pompei and making judgment calls on the stuff we find there. In some quarters, they are excavating the 1980s of Nancy Reagan and Dynasty from the ashes of the past — only now they come with a power blow-out and eyelashes.

That was Trump’s golden age, his oversized youthful ambition still fermenting in his gilded tower — it’s a nostalgic resurrection that is pretty much on the nose. In his case, he did not even have to change his suit and tie — wear the same style long enough and it comes back into fashion. They are making America great again one primary colour at a time. Perhaps I do need the confused pants after all — god knows, they are the only thing making sense right now.

x Aspasia

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