Respect Authority

Let me start by saying that I am far from trendy. Which isn’t to say that I consider myself “above” the latest in fashion, so much as I’m a victim of probability: When any new fad emerges, chances are high I can’t afford it, and don’t look good in it (see: skinny jeans, neon and outerwear that isn’t black wool). But even 20-somethings who may or may not own and wear to work a pair of black capri pants purchased for $10 at Wal-Mart can tell when a trend is being revived. After all, I’ve lived through the 80s, most of them at least. I remember our multi-year obsession with plaid, and the point at which I discovered flares were not only popular, but far more flattering to the thunder thigh. And when hipsters emerged a few years back with neon Wayfarers, vests and Keds, I—like everyone else—smiled condescendingly at the thought that anyone with greasy hair and a Williamsburg apartment thought they were breaking fashion ground.

So I was fairly shocked to discover on Thrillist, an online men’s guide to all things trendy, a promo for designer Franklin and Gower touting the labels’ familiarly decorated pants. If memory serves, and it does because there was a brief period where I exclusively owned pants with stripes down the side, this trend is older than time. And by that I mean about a decade. For a fleeting moment in the midst of my middle school career, side-striped pants were, put bluntly, the shit. I had some flares with a red and white stripe, some wide-legged jeans with a blue and white one, and some bell-bottoms with a (retrospectively) regrettable flower pattern. I owned this trend.

I have no way of knowing whether the reincarnated stripey pants are selling like hotcakes, or like what they are: an exceedingly flamboyant knock-off of a 90s trend. But if I had known that my l.e.i. wide-legs could sell for $185 today, I probably would have held on to them.