Pants Anxiety

It's genuine.

Recently my wife and I spent a night in the famous Guitar Hotel at the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel & Casino in Hollywood, Florida.

Photo by: Jeffrey Greenberg/Universal Images Group via Getty Images

It’s a nice hotel, comfortable and surprisingly quiet, except for 15 minutes every morning, starting precisely at 3:30 a.m., when they tune it.

No, seriously, they tune it during the day. My only real complaint about our room was the shower. I have written previously about the insane complexity of modern hotel shower controls, but I believe the bathroom engineers at Hard Rock have set a record for inscrutability. Here is an unretouched photograph of the shower controls in our Guitar Hotel bathroom:

Of course there are no labels on anything. You’re supposed to just waltz in there stark naked with no prior training and somehow figure out which knobs to turn, and in which directions, and how far. For all you know, one wrong move could cause the top nozzle to spew decaf cappuccino.

But enough about the mystery-hotel-shower-controls problem. As important as it is — and I think we can all agree that I should receive a large cash journalism prize for my work in this field — it is not the subject of this Substack. I mention it only to set the scene for you, the scene being that Michelle and I were spending the night at the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino, because we had tickets to a show there.

Everything went smoothly until, having changed into our evening attire, we were walking to the casino theater. That was when, out of the blue, Michelle said four words to me — four words that I was utterly unprepared for; four words that, if you consider yourself to be a happily married man, you never want to hear your wife say.

The words were: “Are those new pants?”

Of course — you veteran married men know this — the reason she was asking if they were new pants was NOT that she wanted to know if they were new pants. She definitely knew that they were new pants. What she was actually asking me, translated from Wifespeak, was: “What the hell are those pants?”

So I said, “Is there something wrong with these pants?”

And, after a brief pause, she said, “No, they’re fine.” Which of course meant “Yes, there is something wrong with those pants.”

So I said, “What’s wrong with these pants?”

And she said, “They look like sweatpants.”

At that point, what I should have said was, “For your information, this garment happens to be the Vuori clothing company’s Meta Pant Classic, which according to the Vuori website where I bought it is, quote, ‘our take on the timeless five-pocket silhouette, upgraded with superior technical stretch fabric. Built for adventure and movement, the Meta Pant Classic provides everyday comfort with an elevated finish.’”

That’s what I should have said to Michelle, by way of a snappy comeback. Or I could have gone on offense with a zinger such as, “Well at least earlier today I didn’t blow $40 in a matter of minutes by shoving bills into a slot machine that might as well have a sign saying THROW YOUR MONEY AWAY HERE, LOSER.”

But in the moment my brain failed to come up with either of those clever retorts. What I actually said to Michelle, in response to her statement that my pants looked like sweatpants, was, quote, “They’re not sweatpants!”

To which she responded, “It’s OK. They’re fine.”

I assume you do not need me to translate that.

That was the end of the discussion. The rest of the evening was thoroughly enjoyable except for the fact that every 25 to 30 seconds a voice in my brain shouted “YOU’RE WEARING SWEATPANTS!” so loudly that I feared it was audible to the people seated around me in the theater. I wanted to stand up and declare: “They have an ELEVATED FINISH!” But that would have resulted in divorce proceedings.

The truth is, I screwed up. I purchased those pants, without consulting Michelle, in a pathetic attempt to be more fashionable. I know nothing about fashion. I have sported the same “look” (Aging White Man) for decades. I own — this is a conservative estimate — 650 identical light-blue button-down-collar shirts. Every time I enter a store, no matter what I think I’m going to buy, I end up coming out with another light-blue button-down-collar shirt. Even if it’s a grocery store. That’s how deep my fashion rut is.

So I should never have tried to modernize my pants. Pant fashions are tricky. Even the experts can become confused. As evidence, I present a New York Times Style Section story from early this year, which has what could be my favorite Times headline ever:

Yes. Genuine Pants Anxiety. That was the feeling Times fashion writer Jacob Gallagher and his colleagues experienced at the Prada men’s runway show in Milan last January when they suddenly and unexpectedly found themselves face-to-face with pants that were — brace yourself, because I do not intend to sugar-coat this — tight.

This was deeply disturbing, because the tight-pants look, epitomized by fashion hipsters staggering around stuffed into “skinny” jeans that they appeared to have stolen from third-graders, is supposed to be over. These days the hipsters are wearing big pants. Really big pants. These days, if there’s not enough room inside your pants for at least two additional hipsters, your pants are too small.

So the pants fashion science was supposed to be settled: Tight is out; big is in. Everybody agreed on this!

Or so everybody thought. But then, at the Prada men’s runway show in Milan, as Jacob Gallagher wrote in the Times, “models wore trousers in one form and one form only: calf-tight.”

Yes. Calf-tight.

You can imagine how shocking this was for the spectators, who, as members of the fashion community, were of course wearing big pants. As Gallagher wrote: “The shock of the shrunken pants hit particularly hard because the look was such a departure from what nearly all of the audience wore. Embodying the billowy tastes of the day, many editors and celebrities were dressed in pants spanning straight to supersize.”

Gallagher added that “by the time I had departed the show, several friends (notably, those who tend to wear blousy pleated pants) had texted me about those taut trousers. Pants anxiety was on.”

That had to be brutal. I know I speak for all of us when I say that we do not pay our fashion writers enough, and I hope they have recovered from their PTTSD (Post Taut Trousers Stress Disorder).

As for the rest of us, we need to reflect on the lessons we can learn from what happened in Milan.

First and foremost — I’m sure this has already occurred to you — “Genuine Pants Anxiety” would be an excellent name for a rock band.

Second, the issue of men’s pants fashion is fraught, and it is getting fraughter. After the Prada show, are fashionable men still supposed to wear big pants? Or are tiny tight pants coming back? If even professional fashion journalists are confused about this, HOW IS AN ORDINARY CIVILIAN MAN SUPPOSED TO KNOW WHAT TO WEAR, AND IS IT APPRORIATE FOR HIS WIFE TO SUDDENLY QUESTION HIS PANTS WHEN HE IS ON HIS WAY TO THE CASINO THEATER?

These are questions we all need to ask ourselves, Michelle. But we also need to ask some questions of the fashion industry: Do we have to keep changing styles? Can’t we just settle on one? And instead of big pants vs. tiny pants, is it too much to ask for just normal pants?

For the answer to that question, we return to Milan, where in June, six months after the traumatic taut-trousers show, Prada held its Ready to Wear Spring/Summer 2026 runway show. Here’s one of the models:

Photo by Victor VIRGILE/Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images

So the good news for men is, if we want to be fashionable, we don’t have to wear big pants OR tiny pants. The bad news is, we’ll be wearing... underpants.

I just hope they have an elevated finish.

And now, speaking of elevated, it’s time for you paying subscribers to express yourselves.