A Small, Well-Deserved Cult Has Formed Around a Pair of Seemingly-Ugly $30 Men’s Pants
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Up until a few weeks ago, and besides the occasional pack of plain white socks, I had never before purchased a single article ofclothing off of Amazon. This all changed when a photo landed in a group chat with my sister and our friend Cassie Coane. It was a picture of Cassie in a pair of perfectly fitted, extremely flattering pleatedblack slacks. When I asked where she got them, she told me they were Wranglers, ordered on Amazon — for only $26. This was surprising both because the pants looked more expensive than $26 and because Cassie has serious, next-level taste (to put it in perspective, she was the first person I ever saw wearingJesse Kammpantsandcow print, like, seven years ago). I asked her for the link and was handed another surprise: the pants looked deeply, deeply hideous in their product photo — frumpy, ill-fitting, and just all-around bad. So bad, in fact, that I texted to make sure she sent the right link. She had, she informed me.
Cassie told me that she first learned about theseWrangler pantsfromShayna Goldberg, a friend andmakeup artistwhoalsohappens to have a reputation for looking extremely chic and put together all the time. They looked so good on Shayna that Cassie, along with every single other girl on set, bought a pair. The photo shoot wasn’t the last time Shayna acted as an accidental billboard for the pants.Wiona Siedler, a stylish office manager at HVN (my sister’s clothing company), also spotted them on Shayna and instantly bought two pairs. “No, Rio, you don’t understand: I LOVE them,” she texted me when I reached out to her to ask about them.
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Update: Since publishing, I’ve gotten tons questions regarding sizing. These pants run extremely small — I would recommend going up at least two sizes (three if you want a looser fit).
According to Shayna, she herself was first introduced to The Pants back in September, when she saw them on stylistLilli Millhiser. Since that fateful day, they’ve quickly become her everyday, go-to: flattering and nice looking enough to wear to important meetings, easy to pair with sweaters, tanks tops, and turtlenecks and cheap enough that it’s no big deal if she gets some makeup on them on set. She told me that she actually owns four pairs — two black, one birch, and one dark brown — and now seldom wears anything else.
But still: the Amazon photo was so relentlessly ugly, that when my dark blue Wrangler slacks finally arrived, I was nervous to try them on myself. But they slipped on easily and fit like a glove — no hemming or tailoring necessary. They were comfortable, unfussy, and I must say, incredibly slimming — I threw on aturtleneckand apair of boots, and without a second thought, headed out the door. They do run a bit small, so I would recommend sizing up (I’m a size 28 in most jeans, but these in a size 29 and 30 fit me perfectly.) But it seems the chain is already growing — later that night, at a bar in Greenpoint, someone actually askedmewhere I got my slacks from.
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