Men Dress Pants

Men Dress Pants. Fashion Tips and Advice on what to look out for when choosing a pair of men’s dress pants.

Avoid pleated pants

Pleated pants add extra bulk to your midsection and increase the width around your middle, so they hardly help to hide your tummy. Pleated pants offer a little more space and tend to encourage you to stuff your pockets, making you look as if you are retaining water. In contrast, as Kressley notes, “flat-fronts give a slimming effect – there’s not as much fabric clinging and pulling”.

Length of your pants

How long should your pants be? The hems of dress pants should be slightly angled, with the front slightly shorter than the back. This way, the front would rest just slightly on or above your shoe, while the back would just touch the top of the heel of your shoe. As for the style of the hems, a clean hem without cuffs gives the most modern and clean look.

As for casual pants, that should cover the top of your shoe, with no pooling around the ankles or any exposure of your socks.

Waist

Here’s a good rule of thumb suggested by Kressley: you should be able to fit two fingers easily in the waistband. Dress pants should be worn above the hip bone but without touching your belly botton, while jeans should be worn low slung on the hip bone.

Seat

On this note, Kressley’s quip says it best, ‘the seat should fit so that you can tell you have a butt, yet stop short of being so tight that the pants accentuate your butt crack’.

Rise

The rise is the length from the top of your pants to your mid-line. This should fit comfortably, giving you enough room underneath. Nonetheless, it should not be so long that you look strange.

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