It's the same thing

Pants are for all humans

I want to thank No Sale for bringing these Dior 2026 pants to my attention, examples that nicely illustrate some of the themes covered in this Substack.

Dior Pants 2026

Design

These pants are in the category of “Men’s Fashion” and “Women’s Fashion” respectively. But we are looking at the same thing, a human with a torso facing forwards and two legs. Everyone wears pants. Good design is for all humans.

Several comments requested “menswear” patterns in response to a recent DJP post soliciting ideas for new releases. But why? Fit whatever pattern you want to any human. In the community of people making clothes, it is quite likely that the body shape differences from the draft will be much greater than the any difference between the “male” and “female” body with the same dimensions as the draft.

“Male” and “Female” differences are trivial for fitting, these are cultural references or style codes. If your customer has 4 legs then I could understand wanting a separate pattern drafted with this audience in mind. But we are a single species here.

Price

OK, I realize that nobody who reads this Substack is spending that type of dough on RTW¹. Even if you could, they might not be available in your size.

But we can all EASILY make trousers² JUST AS LOVELY IF NOT EVEN LOVELIER than these. And they will fit. Am I yelling? Yes I am. These are not complicated red carpet gowns with inner corselettes. They are basic trews. YOU CAN DO THIS!³

Clothing Literacy

The descriptions of these pants are something else. Here’s the information provided for the $2500 pants:

“Crafted in gray wool-cashmere flannel, they have a regular-fit silhouette embellished with side patch pockets and rear piped pockets”

I am fairly certain they mean side seam pockets, not patch pockets. And no mention of a lining. Wouldn’t the consumer be interested in knowing whether the pants have a lining before forking out? But maybe not, if fashion people don’t know how to describe clothes so you can hardly expect consumers to be informed.

Learning to make clothes gives you clothing literacy. In the age of fast fashion, that is a superpower. You cannot acquire this knowledge by reading or watching. Only by doing. LEARN TO MAKE CLOTHES!

Coming Up

The next MPWM for paid subscribers will be the Muna & Broad Birchgrove Pants which we will start in February. We will make this out of the envelope⁴ and it will be a great opportunity to grade pants for those of us outside the size range. If you have been following along the MPWM the fitting will be straightforward and we will take the opportunity to transform our pattern into bias cut pants like the Row Gala pants. We’ve been doing the MPWM for a year now and have covered many of the fundamental principles of pant fitting so we can play around as we practice how they apply to different designs.

This year we will also be addressing the contemporary cigarette pants which cover the last theme needed to complete our discussion of the major principles of pants fitting. Along the way we will be getting more into construction techniques in isolation as we did for the fly front; the next one planned will be vertical welt pockets.

Don’t forget to take advantage of the opportunity to be the first to receive the new book, I’m so excited about this and can’t wait to get this into your hands!

Ciao for now

xoxo

Ruth

1. Also note the price difference for the virgin wool flannel pant versus the cashmere-wool flannel pants. Does this reflect the difference in material cost or perhaps a willingness of a certain type of consumer to pay a higher price?

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4. So to speak because pattern envelopes are a thing of the past!