FFS: Leather Trousers For Men Is The Next Big Legwear Trend
FFS – For Fashion’s Sake – is a new column that picks the threads of directional, divisive menswear. From the omnihype of luxury streetwear to the foibles of designers’ trippiest fever dreams, these are the bleeding-edge trends to cop or scoff at right now
For some time now, the world of menswear has scrabbling to find a kind of ‘fourth way’ when it comes to trousers. Despite the efforts of adventurous designers, men have always been limited in their options when it comes to keeping your knees warm and your decency upheld. Essentially, we’ve always been stuck between three pillars; jeans, smart trousers and joggers (some might consider chinos a type, but really they’re just golf club jeans).
Recently we’ve seen a huge upsurge in the ‘fitted jogger’, a sleek, tapered, Cottweiler-influenced take on the form. This very millennial brand of ‘sports trouser you can wear to a party’ is definitely creeping towards wider respectability – you’ll even see them in Mayfair clubs and restaurants these days – but they are, and always will be joggers.
By wearing them, you are summoning up the spirits of trainee P.E. teachers, hungover Sundays, laundry Mondays and early morning trips to top up the gas card. For a lot of people, those associations are just too hard to shake.
Yet there is another option, perhaps the most controversial leg-piece known to man: leather trousers. A style synonymous with Ricky Martin, hairsprayed ’80s rockstars and fetish clubs. The 50 years or so since Jim Morrison donned a pair have done little to ingratiate them into the everyday menswear lexicon. They are the ultimate outsider’s trouser, an aesthetic signifier for debauchery, narcissism, social transgression, or line dancing.
David & Victoria Beckham, Alice Cooper
They’ve been knocking around the high fashion sphere for a few years, probably peaking when the likes of Kanye and A$AP started wearing them – much to the chagrin of macho bedroom rap fans around the world. But recent catwalk developments have suggested that there may well be a thirst for the leather trouser beyond spornosexual swag lords, decaying rock stars and suburban swingers parties.
