How Selling the ‘Life-Changing Pants’ Changed My Life
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I’m wearing the life-changing pants now, curled up in a chair. Writers can work in their pajamas, but I don’t like to. I stay in them through the late morning, but then it’s pants and a little makeup time. It cues my brain that I amat work.If I have a Zoom meeting with a student, which I do most days, it is wildly rare I will be wearing leggings or yoga pants.
The life-changing pants are fromLoup, where I began working for at least three different reasons: extra money, wanting to work retail again, to be in the world and off my computer. Also, my town of Hudson, New York, has become nonfunctional on Saturdays — groups of stroller/coffee/dog people take up the sidewalks, hipster tourists GPS the wrong way toward the river, and oodles of out-of-towners line up for a loaf of bread. If you can’t beat them, join them, I suppose — and, in my case, serve them pants.
It was winter and I was home alone when I took the walk through Hudson that brought me to them. I walked past the Loup store and saw the chalkboard outside reading, “Life-Changing Pants.” There was also a “Help Wanted” sign in the window. I’d been in the depths of unexplained infertility for over a year. I wanted my life to change.
When I got back home and looked up the brand, I was struck that there were writers I knew featured on the site, likeJacqueline NovakandAshley Ford.It seemed like a sign. A few days later, I was hired after my conversation with the designer and owner,Danielle Ribner.I got my first pair on the first day, part of the benefit of working there. Once I put them on, I almost never took them off.
One time, a bunch of women came into Loup and asked about the pants. “Have they never heard of marketing?” my co-worker said. Usually, the people who entered the shop fell into two different categories: the believers and the nonbelievers.
As for me, I’m a believer. Walking through cities, my pace always slows when passing signs like “World’s greatest coffee” or “Best burger in NYC.” I once bought a book at the Strand calledThis Book Will Change Your Life.For a while, I was absolutely obsessed with Peachy’s slogan, “Your experience is our obsession.”
But I understand the claim “life-changing pants” is more emotionally loaded than a burger or a coffee. Pants, I learned, are triggering for people, right up there withbathing suitsandbras. As I write inTrying, my memoir of divorce, queerness, andpants, if you thought body positivity was alive and well, try working in a shop with the claim that pants will change your life.
The pants actuallyarephenomenal, though, and if they weren’t, I wouldn’t have been able to sell them. When people asked how the pants would change their lives and what really made them life-changing, my (slightly defensive) speech went something like this:
“We’re the only size-inclusive store in Hudson. The pants run from XXS to 4XL. We are women-owned and run. The clothes are made in New York City. They are 98 percent cotton and 2 percent spandex, making them flattering but also comfortable. They break in to fit your body. If something goes wrong with the pants, we repair them.” That last line usually got their attention. I only threw it out when I could tell the person needed a little something extra, because they were disbelieving, though these were the same people who would end up lifelong customers, coming in one day wearing the pants themselves only to purchase another pair in the same style, different color. Other times, a disbelieving customer would end up wearing the pants right out of the store, asking for a bag to carry their rejected bottoms.
A customer once told me there are “standing pants” and “sitting pants.” She’s right! I have stiff Levis for standing and life-changing pants for sitting (though they look great standing too).
My favorites are theSimones, cropped pants with a button fly, of which I have six pairs (royal blue, brown, terra cotta, two dark denim washes, two light denim washes). Second in line is theSabrina, a wide-legged long pant with a side zipper that gives 1970s, of which I have three (black, washed indigo, dark-wash indigo). I once asked Danielle, the designer, which style she’d take to a desert island, and she immediately said theToni, a basic no-frills trouser that looks flattering on every single person (which I have in pinstripe and evergreen).
In some ways, the pants did change my life. They made my outfits stronger, they made photos look better, they made it easier to get dressed in the morning, they allowed me to look cute while on Zoom but still fold my legs up into weird positions. They make travel easier because they help you look put-together and like you’re wearing a thoughtful outfit without your even doing anything.
My life didn’t change in the ways I expected (or hoped) — like getting pregnant — but it did in unexpected ways, such as selling a book, getting divorced, and rediscovering queerness. It also helped me hate Saturdays less, selling (and wearing) life-changing pants. Like I said to one woman when she asked, “It depends how you want your life to change.”
More often than not, when someone walked out the door, pants in hand, the person’s partner would say, “So, has your life changed?” What they didn’t realize is that life-changing pants aren’t about pants at all; they’re about people wanting to experience hope. And hope is something that you can find anywhere if you look hard enough — in people, pets, politics, even in pants.
Morepantswelove
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