This week’s poll is about your pants and jeans preferences, and more specifically about the widths of their hems. You are on Team Tapered Hems if you prefer pants and jeans with narrower hem openings. You are on Team Wide Hems if you prefer the hems of your pants and jeans a little or a lot wider. Note that the distinctions are trickier than they seem. For example, trendy pants and jeans at the moment can be baggy and pleated on the hips and thighs but taper to a narrower hem. This silhouette qualifies as a tapered hem even though the silhouette is roomy. Bootcuts are very fitted on the hips and thighs, but flare out from the knee to a wider hem. Bootcuts therefore qualify as wide hems.
Silhouettes like skinnies, jeggings, leggings, jodhpur pants, harem pants, lantern pants, cigarette pants, boyfriend jeans, joggers and narrow straight legs fall under tapered hems despite the fact that some of the silhouettes are very roomy. Silhouettes like bootcuts, baby bootcuts, wide legs, wide crops, palazzo pants, cropped flares, culottes and wide straight legs fall under wide hems because the hems flare out instead of tapering back in towards the body.
Despite the fact that fashion has generally been moving away from skinnies, cigarette styles and tapered hem silhouettes, I’m willing to bet that Team Tapered Hems will win this poll. Pants and jeans silhouettes with wide and roomy hems is where it’s at trends wise, but the tapered hem is more practical, streamlining, less fussy, and easy to style. Most of my clients have included wide hems back into their styles, but continue to enjoy tapered hems. A handful of clients only wear wide hems and welcomed the less trendy skinny and narrow straight leg with open arms.
I’m on a current wide hem kick. I’ve bought many pairs of cropped flares, wide crops, a pair of bootcuts, and very roomy straights over the last five years. I’ve also bought a few pairs of full-length denim wide legs. But I continue to enjoy tailored and dressy cigarette pants and straight legs and added a few more of those to my wardrobe this year too. I enjoy a wide hem as much as a tapered hem, so I’m sitting this one out on the bench with butternut and orange soup laced with lots of ginger and cumin, cheese tosties, a crisp green salad, and Greg’s delectable lemon meringue pie with perfect ginger crust for dessert.
Over to you. Do you bat for Team Tapered Hems or Team Wide Hems? Tell us why and no batting for both teams. But feel free to join me on the bench, although I have dibs on seconds of my favourite pie.
