The Wide Jeans Thread

[bloom]

Straight is the gate and narrow the way…but my jeans don’t have to be.

as mentioned in the other thread, about guys wearing jeans in their hallways, gardens or on patios overlooking the alps, there’s some pretty strong wide legged shennanigans being perpetrated by the likes of @81FXR, @istewi and @Hopethisoneisnttaken, and many more. I like the look, and also the possibilities it presents for climate adaptation and smuggling wine bottles in and out of places. So please teach me the Wide Legged Jean.

I jotted down orslow painters, Moto jeans (unheard of, hard to Google), and Oni something. Some more details and personal thoughts and experiences would be appreciated.

I could have kicked this off with an appreciation for some 90s Levi’s 550, seen on covers of mostly bad early 90s rap cds, but turns out they’re in storage. The Levi’s, that is, the cds I sold for a pretty penny.

[Talan]

Advice will be plentiful, I'm sure. If we're only talking about jeans, the Full Count 0105 comes to mind immediately. Also some At Last cuts, but they are harder to buy. TCB 20's. Iron Heart 634 is pretty wide, but these are not for the faint hearted, real deal boys only.

[bloom]

2 hours ago, Talan said:

 not for the faint hearted

I’m currently pretty faint hearted. I need softness and volumes to shelter me from the world.

2 hours ago, Talan said:

real deal boys only.

Can’t decide whether this reminds me more of Pinocchio or the basement of a Berlin fetish club.

Edited September 16, 2023 by bloom

[bloom]

Got caught up in the semantics, forgot to check the pants (coincidentally, also a quote I’ve heard in…Pinocchio).
 

Full Count 0105 actually looks pretty spot on, @Talan, very much like what I had in mind. Thanks!

[81FXR]

Love this. Honestly I’m so entrenched in the wide-legged life by this point I can’t even fathom some of the painted-on fits that I donned in my youth.

The tricky thing is that wide leg seems to mean anything from ‘actually kinda regular’ to ‘Hammertime’. Worth just trying some too as your height/figure will determine what looks good on you.

An additional challenge is that for whatever reason retailers don’t often show wide leg fits in their best light. Either they’re on a 6,6 beefcake with bison thighs and they just look like slim fit, or they’re stacked from ankle to thigh on some tiny dude who looks like they raided a giant’s wardrobe.

As a styling sidenote, shirts/tees need to be tucked for a wide leg to work. Something about an untucked shirt and wide leg trousers looks really really off. Probably down to the fit being inspired by a time when people aspired to dress smartly rather than in stained tracksuits. Also I find cuffing or hemming to a bit above the laces is crucial to keeping that loose, straight silhouette without stacking.

Buzz Rickson’s 1942 chino are a fave fit of mine.

Full Count does some really nice utility pants.

I’m a big fan ONI but couldn’t get a wide fit until earlier this year when I got the 200ZR. The one-wash also doesn’t shrink so the fit will remain after washing.

Controversially, probably my favourite wide-leg denim fit is (gasp) Nudie… they do a 17oz Japanese denim in their ‘Tuff Tony’ fit and it’s probably the best fitting jean I’ve ever had. Sometimes you gotta ditch the denim snobbery to attain the fit. The chino in the same fit is also nice. High waist, wide leg. Pic below. 

 

 

 

Edited September 16, 2023 by 81FXR

[Talan]

1 hour ago, bloom said:

Got caught up in the semantics, forgot to check the pants (coincidentally, also a quote I’ve heard in…Pinocchio).
 

Full Count 0105 actually looks pretty spot on, @Talan, very much like what I had in mind. Thanks!

I love FC 0105. Perfect cut, excellent quality soft denim, color, fading contrast, etc. Oh, I see I am a fan boy. Who knows, could be, I like everything I have from FC. TCB 20's is pretty comfortable too, unless you have some special reasons to hate suspenders. It's funny to put FC and TCB together in recommendations list, but you probably know why. 

Iron Heart, well I still have two or three pieces from them, do not think will buy again. 

[Thanks_M8]

2 hours ago, 81FXR said:

Love this. Honestly I’m so entrenched in the wide-legged life by this point I can’t even fathom some of the painted-on fits that I donned in my youth.

The tricky thing is that wide leg seems to mean anything from ‘actually kinda regular’ to ‘Hammertime’. Worth just trying some too as your height/figure will determine what looks good on you.

An additional challenge is that for whatever reason retailers don’t often show wide leg fits in their best light. Either they’re on a 6,6 beefcake with bison thighs and they just look like slim fit, or they’re stacked from ankle to thigh on some tiny dude who looks like they raided a giant’s wardrobe.

As a styling sidenote, shirts/tees need to be tucked for a wide leg to work. Something about an untucked shirt and wide leg trousers looks really really off. Probably down to the fit being inspired by a time when people aspired to dress smartly rather than in stained tracksuits. Also I find cuffing or hemming to a bit above the laces is crucial to keeping that loose, straight silhouette without stacking.

Buzz Rickson’s 1942 chino are a fave fit of mine.

Full Count does some really nice utility pants.

I’m a big fan ONI but couldn’t get a wide fit until earlier this year when I got the 200ZR. The one-wash also doesn’t shrink so the fit will remain after washing.

Controversially, probably my favourite wide-leg denim fit is (gasp) Nudie… they do a 17oz Japanese denim in their ‘Tuff Tony’ fit and it’s probably the best fitting jean I’ve ever had. Sometimes you gotta ditch the denim snobbery to attain the fit. The chino in the same fit is also nice. High waist, wide leg. Pic below. 

 

 

 

Great fits mate love your play on fits

[bloom]

@81FXR you pretty much sum up the state of affairs. If they ever decide to start a wide legged pants course at Yale, you could definitely teach it.

Presentation from sellers is weird. Once things move towards wide territory, presentation tends to get a bit extreme. I don’t want to look like this:

Also surprised at how often they squeeze the model into a size where the top block looks just like any old (new) 501, but with ballooning around the thighs, and a psychotic break around the ankles. And then there’s a category of its own, the Korean tent-boy look, with oversized Oxford shirt flying loose, and if you add a bucket hat you could register your outfit as a permanent address.
 

So it becomes a question of proportions, of course, which I think you pull off brilliantly. Hard to gauge without actually trying on, though. I prefer the 1945 chinos from Buzz, to get more or less the same look as I’d guess  you get with the 42’s. I actually have a pair of vintage army chinos (I think they’re from the 60s, but the cut is pretty much identical to most 42 repros I’ve seen), but every time I’ve worn them, my girlfriend’s asked me if I’m going to the park to play hackey sack. I just don’t have the….posterolateral gravitas needed to make such generous cuts look good.

I agree that some room between shoes and cuff is usually advisable,to break up the volumes, and on me it tends to look better if I roll/cuff wide trousers twice, to get some weight. A pair of otherwise perfect HBT fatigues I have, from orSlow, get little use because I hemmed them before shrinkage was done.

Had to sit down when I realized those two pictures last are Nudies, by the way. Looks great. If I were to ever wear Nudies, though, I’d first need to find a way to forgive all those Swedish bartenders who denied me service ca. 2003 while wearing skin tight Nudies, simply because I was underage and obviously high.

 

[lyraman]

The Tender Co. Oxford jeans are a very nice, very wide cut too and come in some very interesting dyes.

[Hopethisoneisnttaken]

A lot has been said, so all I can add is personal experience (thanks for the invitation to share my opinion by the way). 

let’s start with tcb 20s. Personally for me they do not fit as a wide cut. I love my pair of 20s. I wear them a lot. Their somewhat of straight pair of jeans, my first pair of non slim jeans, but definitely not wide. For me wide jeans have at least 35 cm in the thigh measurement (straight line from the crotch seam to the outseam). My first pair of wide jeans (note: I had wide trousers before, like BR 42 chinos) are the old baggy jeans from Moto/r (This is a link), and they definitely took some getting used to. The cut is wide with a small taper, sort of a balloon fit. It took some getting used to in a sense that I was not comfortable with the look in the beginning, however I it was a combination of things. Mostly that I chose a bigger size so things took a while to become proportional for a lack of better word. Also I have a pair of belafonte denim trousers which are higher, wider and taper-ier than the motor jeans. 
 

There’s also the question of design, are you aiming for a classic five pocket? Chino? USN trousers? 
 

Tcb seamen trousers I think are worth looking into if usn trousers are an option. 
 

Another good option is Black Sign vocalion jeans (and while they cost a fortune on S&S, they are priced a lot more comfortably directly from Japan). 
 

 

[julian-wolf]

12 hours ago, Talan said:

Advice will be plentiful, I'm sure. If we're only talking about jeans, the Full Count 0105 comes to mind immediately. Also some At Last cuts, but they are harder to buy. TCB 20's. Iron Heart 634 is pretty wide, but these are not for the faint hearted, real deal boys only.

??? The 634 is aggressively slim, just like the rest of Iron Heart’s cuts

As has already been noted, the TCB ‘20s are a pretty true (not particularly wide) straight cut as well

[81FXR]

59 minutes ago, julian-wolf said:

??? The 634 is aggressively slim, just like the rest of Iron Heart’s cuts

 

This was my experience also. Not to mention the weird pocket spacing. Don’t get me wrong I’ve got some IH things I really like (N1 and flannels) but they’re not the place to go for wide, straight fits with a decent rise. Or even regular ones really.

Edited September 16, 2023 by 81FXR

[ATWM]

I’ll just add to the pile that the 20s aren’t wide. I have a size up and they’re generous but still not there. Black Sign does have some wide offerings - I have a pair of wide trousers from them, but I have to say even proxied from Japan I still find them a little rich for what they are and probably wouldn’t buy again. 

[smoothsailor]

All pants I wear are wide fit.

buzz 42 are excellent, just cut up 2 pairs of atlast into shorts. Lot 147 and lot 161, both similar fit, high rise and wide thighs and hem. 
also have a pair of Dawson denim wide fit. These are almost bell bottoms . There is no shape to them they go straight down from top to bottom. I like a little taper in the top block I guess what it is.

compaired to these pairs the Fullcount 0105 is almost just an ordinary pair . 

[julian-wolf]

I’ve always found the Dawson Wide and Wide Tapered fits really appealing; they seem like a couple of the best options out there

Edited September 16, 2023 by julian-wolf

[Talan]

1 hour ago, julian-wolf said:

??? The 634 is aggressively slim, just like the rest of Iron Heart’s cuts

As has already been noted, the TCB ‘20s are a pretty true (not particularly wide) straight cut as well

My IH-634S is not aggressively slim, it is straight, with hem about 24 cm in my size 36, so in my book it is rather wide. 

[julian-wolf]

Straight cut with a 24 cm hem would mean around a 24 cm thigh, which for a 36” waist would be slimmer than slimmer than slim…but this is starting to feel off-topic

[Talan]

15 minutes ago, julian-wolf said:

Straight cut with a 24 cm hem would mean around a 24 cm thigh, which for a 36” waist would be slimmer than slimmer than slim…but this is starting to feel off-topic

thigh is 35.5 cm, yes better leave it

[chicote]

Right, what’s “wide” is subjective and also going off thigh or leg opening measurements alone doesn’t really paint a complete picture. Most of the pants I wear are somewhere between 21-25cm in leg opening, which is relatively wide for my size 29 waist, but would be definitively slimmer for somebody whose pants have 10+cm wider waistbands than mine.

I’m not home right now, but brought a pair of 1940s army trousers with me that have a 24.5cm leg opening, 29cm thigh and 76cm waist.

 

I’m not sure if there can be a strict rule about it, but for myself personally, my “wide” pants usually have a leg opening that measures around or at least 30% of the waist measurement. These army trousers are about 32%, for reference. But I don’t necessarily feel it’s useful to get so granular since our styles and body types give us all widely differing perspectives and experiences regarding different fits.

[bloom]

3 hours ago, Hopethisoneisnttaken said:

old baggy jeans from Moto/r (This is a link), and they definitely took some getting used to. The cut is wide with a small taper, sort of a balloon fit.

The pics where you’re wearing these were one of three sources that made me realize there is a balloon shaped hole in my closet. I looked at the jeans and thought they shouldn’t work, but evidently they look really good on you. Something about drape and proportions. Again, strongly doubt they would work on me, as I’m tall and skinny. It did make me think about how denim breaks in, as I have an old pair of slightly oversized 505s from early 80s or so, super straight, but big on me, however they drape nicely due to being broken in. With all the slim straight or straight jeans I normally wear, there isn’t really enough leftover fabric to notice drape much, and I get the feeling they wouldn’t fall all that softly anyway until truly washed out. Exception for a pair of SC66s which actually softened really quickly, and drapes obediently.

with a bigger model, it would become important to me that it softens a bit and sort of tucks into itself to avoid that big stiff denim monster look. Again, because I’m quite slim, so things can get comical pretty quickly.

 

3 hours ago, Hopethisoneisnttaken said:

There’s also the question of design, are you aiming for a classic five pocket? Chino? USN trousers? Tcb seamen trousers I think are worth looking into if usn trousers are an option. 

Classic five pocket was the first thought, but then again I think @istewi wore orslow painters in that one photo, which also definitely scratched my particular itch. Already have some chinos which work very well, some old McCoys or BR 40s that look big enough on me, and a pair of MHL chinos that I really love. Again, drape is key, they felt and looked slightly clownish before the first wash.

3 hours ago, Hopethisoneisnttaken said:

Another good option is Black Sign vocalion jeans (and while they cost a fortune on S&S, they are priced a lot more comfortably directly from Japan). 

But there’s a pocket missing. Where do I put my left hand? Other than that, they look nice, and the cut is definitely on to something.

 

Thanks for all the input, man!

[bloom]

28 minutes ago, chicote said:

I don’t necessarily feel it’s useful to get so granular since our styles and body types give us all widely differing perspectives and experiences regarding different fits.

Agree, it’s definitely the look and feel that’s interesting, to me at least. Those army trousers look good, however you’d want to label them.

[bloom]

@julian-wolf those Dawsons look very good indeed. Current currency rates would sting, but I do love that they’re made in Brighton. 
 

@smoothsailor I have admired your at last jeans in various threads before, but still can’t figure out how to go about to order a pair.

 

one thing that does appeal to me with the full counts, in addition to price and availability, is that they’re a sort of gentle first step towards more volume. And no buckle, I struggle with buckles. 

[Maynard Friedman]

There’s also Full Count 0106, which, I think, are an even looser cut than the 0105s (the current versions of which, have a wider hem than the 0105s with arcs and tab).

[smoothsailor]

Thanks @bloom, apparently you can e mail them and order a pair.

I picked one one while there.

dawson is indeed a bit steep, especially with shipping and tax

[Maynard Friedman]

1 hour ago, julian-wolf said:

Straight cut with a 24 cm hem would mean around a 24 cm thigh, which for a 36” waist would be slimmer than slimmer than slim…but this is starting to feel off-topic

My understanding and experience of a straight cut is not one that’s straight down from the thighs with parallel outseam and inseam but a cut that tapers from the thigh to the knee and then runs straight to the hem. Most of the straight cuts I have tend to have a 13” thigh and 9” hem (approx).

[julian-wolf]

It’s all semantics, and I’m sure a dozen folks would have just as many different definitions—but I guess that’s what I’d think of as slim–straight

Either way, semantics aside def. nothing wide about that style…

[Maynard Friedman]

I think slim-straight is as described above (ie straight) but with smaller proportions, e.g. the 13” thigh and 9” hem would be standard for a 32” waist and a slim-straight version would probably have 11.5” thigh and 7.5” hem. Check out Sugar Cane measurements for their 1947 (straight cut) and then the slimmer versions of the 1947 model. There is no way a 13” thigh and 9” hem on a W32 is slim-straight.

[julian-wolf]

I guess that’s where the subjective nature of it comes in (or maybe just differences in body type): the SC 47 feels like just about the quintessential slim–straight cut to me 

[Maynard Friedman]

I know this could run and run but most people would consider the SC-47 a classic straight cut. I don’t know anywhere that you’d find it described as slim-straight.

[chicote]

I think definitions of what constitutes wide are also really time-specific. When I was first getting into denim twelve or so years ago, I have a distinct memory of the Samurai 710 being the quintessential slim-straight cut, along with things like the pbj 007, sc66, evisu 2000, fullcount 1108 etc. Nowadays, those are all too slim for my tastes, but they are still pretty middle-of-the-road for the general fashion world. But twelve years ago, those were definitely on the looser end of what a lot of people would wear, especially during the size-down-2 dark ages. Most brands’ 1947 cuts were, at that time, definitely wide, relatively speaking, but the window has shifted in the past decade and now those jeans are more along the lines of the sort of “standard” fit I think a lot of us have in mind when deciding the wideness of a particular cut. So in that way I can see how a sc1947 would fill the role that a brand’s flagship “slim straight” did a decade ago, even if it is technically categorized as a straight cut.

Edited September 16, 2023 by chicote