How I Finally Found Pants That Aren’t Jeans

GQ staff writer Clay Skipper’s step-by-step makeover continues with Chapter 3: Pants That Aren’t Jeans.

It took me 26 years to find a pair of pants I really, truly liked: a pair of slim black jeans. Problem was, by the time I was just getting comfortable in the new me, baggy was back in, jeans were back out, and I’d blown the crotch out of my precious A.P.C.’s—twice. Finding replacement bottoms should have been easy. There’s never been a better time, I was assured, to be a pants haver. But for someone new to the trousers game, the breadth of choice was paralyzing. On a trip to Barneys, everything I pulled off the racks was compelling: the joyously spacious drop-crotch AMIs; a pair of blue slacks with white piping from Officine Générale; single-pleated wide-leg Dries Van Notens that made me feel—and look—like the coolest Newsie in all of New York (and, their costing half a grand, probably the richest in the history of newsboys). Read more at GQ.