The trouble with styling men’s leggings
Wearing men’s leggings for fashion isn’t a mainstream thing. Sure there’s a growing trend but I don’t think it is growing like bamboo or a well-cultivated garden. In my strange sense of humor, I suspect men’s leggings as a fashion statement are growing a bit like a mold down in the basement. It’s growing but most folks are completely unaware. When they do discover it they may not be as thrilled about it as we’d like them to be.
Now I’d like to see the trend pick up the pace and gain more mainstream acceptance but that’s not really what this blog post is about. It is mostly about how difficult it can be to style men’s leggings.
From my experience, the difficulty in styling leggings mainly comes from actually having to learn styling concepts and build your own style. A few years ago I didn’t really think about style. I just threw on whatever was available on top of the drawer and easily accessible in the closet and away I went. I didn’t really have a look. I wasn’t consciously trying to build an aesthetic. I was going through the motions.
You can’t really do that when trying to style men’s leggings. You have to learn about layering and picking your clothes based on how they fit and working on creating your own style. Here’s the first thing I learned about styling leggings and why I think it isn’t as easy as it sounds.
Men’s leggings aren’t pants
This will be quite obvious to many of you reading this but I wanted to start here. Wearing leggings in public and not looking like a 9-year-old playing dress-up requires we understand that leggings can’t simply replace the pair of pants in any old shirt and shoe combo.
If you typically walk out the door in a pair of sneakers a printed t-shirt and a pair of jeans, we may first have to address your general style choices, but after that, you shouldn’t necessarily just swap out the jeans for a pair of leggings.
“But they go on my legs??” - “pants go my legs” - “leggings are pants, man!”
All true statements, but they aren’t able to be styled that way, in my opinion. They can be styled a bit like skinny pants, but those are niche pants that you may or may not already own. Simply put when men want to wear leggings for fashion they should treat them like leggings and not like pants. This shift will make it easier to build a look that looks put together and stylish.
Once you think your whole look through and don’t just replace an element in your wardrobe you can really begin to consciously create real looks that incorporate leggings. As usual, once you’ve leveled up it doesn’t necessarily mean things get easier. Generally leveling up means things get a bit harder and that is where the rest of the issues I am now struggling through with men’s leggings start to pop up.
Men’s leggings are often too sporty looking or way too out there.
This issue is entirely on the boutique men’s leggings or meggings brands. Brand after brand has decided that all men’s leggings should have fun patterns, big bold colors, and all other manners of avant-garde fashion. This means you are often stuck looking a bit like a peacock. Trying to incorporate wild colors and bold patterns into something you can wear to the office in a stylish way is a pretty tall order. The same goes for metallic, leather, and other “out-there” fabrics.
It seems that right now most boutique brands claiming they are making men’s leggings for fashion are only interested in leggings that fit in at a festival or rave but not the office.
On the flip side, all the big box brands are only making leggings for fitness. This is fine if you want to wear them out in the athleisure trend, but again the athletic look has a hard time making the cut for date night or in the office. Until men’s leggings brands decide to make leggings in more toned down and classic looks they’ll remain difficult to style.
Imagine the below outfit in the office? Can’t be done. Sure I can wear this around the house or out to the grocery store but the look isn’t really fashionable or stylish - but what can you do when you have a wild colorful print from the waist down - am I right??!
Men’s leggings don’t come in many fabric choices
One of the hardest reasons men’s leggings are hard to style is that there are very few brands offering men’s leggings in anything but nylon. It makes it difficult to layer cotton, wool, or other natural fiber fabrics on top of them. It is very mismatched.
It seems to date, all the brands making men’s leggings are expecting us to be sporty all the time or again only going to a festival. Want to wear your leggings with a cardigan or with a layered cotton button-down? You can do it as long as you can pull off the shiny, multi-colored, I am a kid playing dress-up look. You have to have just as much going on on top to be able to handle all that shiny pattern happening underneath - take a look below - the look is great, but is it ready for date night and the office?
When meggings makers do create a legging in other fabrics they go the other way. Metallic finishes, leather, sheer, highly textured. These looks are fine but they are extremely limiting. The leggings I own from Kapow for example are very hard to style or from LED Queens or from Soft and Rugged. These are all decent quality leggings but they only fit with sporty clothing or very flamboyant stylings.
The best brand of men’s leggings that actually had some fashion sense was Jeffery Scott but they’ve since closed down and moved the styles to Cut2Me and I have yet to see if the quality is the same. That said those leggings came with a cotton option, in neutral colors with different shines or a matte finish, and they don’t have a massive logo on the leg. They have fashion sense.
Why are men’s leggings hard to style?
The answer is pretty straightforward. Men’s leggings as they exist from the brands making them today are focused on the active fitness category. Gym shorts are also hard to style. Running shoes same issue. They are extremely focused on the gym and getting out of the gym and into the business casual environment will require brands to make leggings that fit in that environment.
Imagine going out on a date in running shoes and running shorts? Imagine going into the office with a hoody and joggers? That’s the place men’s leggings reside right now and styling fitness items is difficult to impossible.
I think the most obvious reason is that not a lot of men are looking to make leggings a part of their habitual wear. Not many dudes want to wear leggings to the office and so the demand to make those kinds of leggings is limited. The most simple answer is that business economics has left us limited to trying to style leggings that can’t really be styled.
Looking at women’s leggings
This has led me to an obvious choice. Start wearing women’s and or unisex leggings. They come in better fabric choices. They come in better colors. They already have clear style guides and outfits to choose from. They are priced WAY more affordably. The biggest crime with men’s leggings is that they are $80 dollars a pop and can only be worn in a limited capacity - You can get a 2 pack of women’s leggings at Costco for less than $20!!
Maybe women’s leggings are a better choice.
To date, I have kept to men’s brands because I felt they would fit my anatomy better, but honestly, most brands still suffer from fit issues. Especially the boutique brands.
Over the next few months, I think I’ll be trying a few of these unisex and women’s brands out and I will see if they can be better integrated into a fashionable look. I for one want to see my style with leggings be more wide-ranging, more adaptable and flexible, and better looking so that I can wear leggings as a man and pull it off as very fashionable.
No more wild and crazy colors, no more gym on the bottom office on top, and no more kid playing dress-up looks. I want to make leggings look damn good. I want to look put together and fashionable in a classic sense. And I want to wear leggings and turn heads while doing it!
Is that a tall order? Maybe, but I am up to the challenge.
