Curse of the wrong trousers

The trousers were barely mid-thigh when I realised they weren’t going to work. A familiar awareness crept over me: of a fabric’s limits being tested, of a mounting sense of defeat. Another store was becoming Tops Only.

I invented this designation several years ago, after narrowly avoiding actual tears in a Zara dressing room; rather than fight my way through the bundle of midrise cargo pants I’d optimistically amassed, I admitted defeat and walked away, mentally filing the Spanish behemoth as a place I could no longer go to for shorts, trousers or jeans.

These days I have a list of six or seven Tops Only stores, establishments I still frequent, but instead of pawing desperately to the bottom of various piles of denim and jacquard, I have stopped expecting them to provide options for my lower half. 

It’s a little defeatist, sure, but this policy has brought me a certain peace, and many calm hours browsing jumpers, dresses and accessories in & Other Stories and the like. I have accepted it: trousers are not for everyone.

I didn’t start there, naturally. Like a good millennial raised during the height of early Noughties diet culture, I started by blaming my body. Of course I couldn’t find trousers that fit.

My enormous ar*e, sturdy Germanic bone structure and confusing existence in the sartorial grey area that is ‘midsize’ – a newish category describing bodies slightly too large for so-called straight sizes and slightly too small for plus offerings – meant I was uniquely difficult to clothe, a freak among women.

I gave the trousers problem to Maggie, the size 16 narrator of my novel Really Good, Actually, thinking one or two women my size and shape might relate, while most readers would see it as a funny window into a way of life they’d never have to deal with. Reader response since the book came out a month ago is that this thing goes all the way to the top (er, bottom).

Nobody is having any luck out there. After reading Maggie’s inner monologue during various clothing-related breakdowns, strangers, friends and acquaintances have catalogued for me their own struggles, in whispered asides at book events or, more often, frenzied late-night DMs: petite girls drowning in 30-inch inseams, apple-shaped women with sagging puddles of fabric around their bums, size 10s and 12s squeezing into the store’s last remaining size large, while 14s were told in hushed tones ‘our XL is online only’. Although options for plus-sized shoppers have increased dramatically online, they are still largely sized out of the in-store experience, left to squint fruitlessly at three images of a model in harem pants and click ‘purchase’ with a prayer that the fabric quality on these ones might be passable.

I’ve concluded that, trousers-wise, we’re living in a simulation, drowning in the illusion of choice without any real choices to hand. Brands are making empty gestures towards the idea of trousers: two cylinders approximating a pair of legs yet totally hostile towards actual limbs of any age, shape or size. Belt loops, sure, maybe buttons or a fly – the impression is absolutely of trousers a person might reasonably expect to wear, but without any human body in mind throughout their design and execution.

I’m sure you know what I’m talking about: material barely able to withstand the friction of folding, let alone two thighs rubbing against each other. The sizing systems are as flimsy as the fabric: a 14 in one store fits larger than that same shop’s 16; a Large can mean anything from 10-20; and don’t start me on the communal gaslighting endeavour that is ‘one size fits all’. I cannot keep buying the same old barrel-leg jeans from Whistles.

I have started to ask some readers how they cope. Do they have their own Tops Only lists? Some secret dressing-room hack? Not really. A few source vintage trousers from Ebay, Vestiaire and The RealReal. Some pilfer from their mothers’ and grandmothers’ closets.

Most suggest it’s a kind of numbers game, a matter of spending an unpleasant few hours reminding yourself in a branch of H&M that you are ‘enough’ while trying on pile after pile of doomed denim.

One wise woman I met told me she treats shopping for trousers as if she were visiting a fabric store: if she likes the look of something, she buys it in the largest size they have and gets it tailored to her body. I too have made friends with my neighbourhood tailor recently and it’s been something of a revelation, though spending £25 more on altering every pair of £35 trousers you buy hardly feels like a dream solution.

Maybe there are no easy answers. Certainly, a huge part of the problem is fast fashion and the mindset it has created in consumers, and I have no great ideas for how to fix that.

I’m just shocked to discover it’s as impossible for everyone else as it is for Maggie and me, and wish we all had better options. I mean, come on – the low-rise style is almost back. We’re gonna need all the help we can get.

Monica’s debut novel Really Good, Actually is published by HarperCollins, £14.99*

*To order a copy for £12.74 until 5 March go to mailshop.co.uk/books or call 020 3176 2937. Free UK delivery on orders over £20.