Jeans? Some Boys Shout, ‘No Way!’
Mar 12, 2015 8:33:43 GMT -5
Post by mrsbuttinski on Mar 12, 2015 8:33:43 GMT -5
Jackson Schad gave up on jeans in kindergarten.
“They’re really tight, and I just don’t like how they fit on me,” said Jackson, who is 7½ and now in second grade.
Instead, on any given day, Jackson leaves his Brooklyn home outfitted in sweatpants that are fuzzy and baggy and, compared with denim, “a lot more looser,” he said. His favorite sweats are a red pair that he hikes up with matching suspenders.
Jackson’s identical twin brother, Kasey, however, considers himself a dressy kind of guy and likes a more polished look.
“Comfy pants are more for wearing when you’re relaxing,” Kasey said. “Jeans are more for all kinds of things. Like if I went to a restaurant, I would wear jeans.”
In a sign that America’s embrace of casual wear has trickled down, way down, the nation is now teeming with throngs of little kids in track pants looking as if they just stepped out of an episode of “The Sopranos.”
The culture of casual has invaded every place from airport runways, where plane cabins are filled with passengers in yoga pants, to fashion runways; Tommy Hilfiger last month offered an athletic-themed line complete with a catwalk designed as a football field.
It used to be that moms couldn’t get boys out of jeans for formal affairs. Now, they can’t seem to get their sons into them. While some girls also eschew jeans, it is a particularly comic phenomenon that part of a generation of boys — reared by dads raised in Sears Toughskins and in an era in which tightly woven Carhartts became a fashion trend — won’t do denim.
Jeans are too uncomfortable, these boys complain. They’re stiff, itchy and just too tight. Instead, as their parents wince, the boys demand pants that are baggy and easy to pull on.
Pleas for help roll into various parenting blogs.
A forum topic on babycenter.com is titled, “Do any of your kids hate jeans?” One parent responded: “My son is 10. Hates jeans. Like seriously refuses to wear them.”
On netmums.com, one mother wrote: “My 2.5 year old hates wearing jeans. He was never keen on them, but he now screams murder as soon as he sees me coming with jeans.”
Many families experiencing denim rejection have a nickname for nondungarees that their boys adore: swish-swash pants, slippery pants, slicks or soft pants. These pants proliferate on the racks at Target, Old Navy and Baby Gap. They need frequent replacement as they fray at the hems, succumb to tears in the knee area or show other signs of wear.
Marina Lansdown, who lives on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, said that her three sons wear only track pants and sweats. “It’s driving me insane, ” she said.
When the family goes out to dinner, she can sometimes compel the boys, ages 6, 8 and 10, to put on corduroys. “I don’t want you to look like you just came off the basketball court,” she said she tells them.
Laurel Howe of New Canaan, Conn., said that her 11-year-old son wore khakis and a collared shirt to school most days. Then in fourth grade, a friend asked him why he always wore church clothes to school.
It’s been track pants ever since, said Ms. Howe, who said the entire middle school is suffering from an anti-jeans epidemic.
Designers of boys clothing are trying to help by creating sweats and track pants for boys that look more fancy and by making jeans out of more pliable, soft denim.
A few labels and retailers, like Lands’ End and H&M, offer synthetic athletic pants, some with tapered ankles, as well as sweatpants with colorful trim and pocket linings.
New bluejean styles for boys include brushed-cotton linings, baggy cuts and stretchy denim blends or prewashed denim that feels softer. Even Sears has adapted its Toughskins line, adding knits and styles in relaxed fit or with skinny bottoms and a “jogger silhouette,” said Mike Allen, Sears’s divisional vice president for children’s apparel.
Jeans are still a top seller at MiniBoden, the children’s collection from Boden USA. But to please picky customers, the company has integrated more designs with elasticized waistbands, said Theo Ford, who runs boys’ wear design for the company. Over the past couple of seasons, designers have tweaked track pants, also a big seller, to make them roomier, he said. And the company plans to expand its fleece pants line.
Focus groups informed designers at J. Crew’s Crewcuts line that boys prefer lighter-weight fabrics, so the company is gussying up track pants to appease boys and parents. Boys’ sweatpants are pegged toward the ankles and can be paired with a matching track jacket for an urbane look. Cargo pants come in a softer fabric and are slimmer through the legs than past designs.
“We’ve been working our way toward the most comfortable pants possible while still being something they can wear to school,” said Jenny Cooper, the head of design at Crewcuts, whose own 9-year-old son has declared a war on denim.
Older boys tend to outgrow bluejean aversion. Patty Ward’s 12-year-old son recently decided he would succumb to jeans, as other boys his age were doing. But the moment he walks in the door after school, he takes them off and lounges around their Chicago home in his boxer briefs.
“In hindsight, the soft-pants stage wasn’t so bad,” Ms. Ward said.
A version of this article appears in print on March 12, 2015, on page D5 of the New York edition with the headline: Jeans? Some Boys Shout, ‘No Way!’.
www.nytimes.com/2015/03/12/fashion/jeans-some-boys-shout-no-way.html?ref=fashion&_r=0
I'm kind of wondering why there was no mention of SPD anywhere in this piece. When DS's psych used to get called in my districts to observe kids who might be on spectrum, he could generally guess it was the kid in the sweat pants and Velcro character sneakers.
“They’re really tight, and I just don’t like how they fit on me,” said Jackson, who is 7½ and now in second grade.
Instead, on any given day, Jackson leaves his Brooklyn home outfitted in sweatpants that are fuzzy and baggy and, compared with denim, “a lot more looser,” he said. His favorite sweats are a red pair that he hikes up with matching suspenders.
Jackson’s identical twin brother, Kasey, however, considers himself a dressy kind of guy and likes a more polished look.
“Comfy pants are more for wearing when you’re relaxing,” Kasey said. “Jeans are more for all kinds of things. Like if I went to a restaurant, I would wear jeans.”
In a sign that America’s embrace of casual wear has trickled down, way down, the nation is now teeming with throngs of little kids in track pants looking as if they just stepped out of an episode of “The Sopranos.”
The culture of casual has invaded every place from airport runways, where plane cabins are filled with passengers in yoga pants, to fashion runways; Tommy Hilfiger last month offered an athletic-themed line complete with a catwalk designed as a football field.
It used to be that moms couldn’t get boys out of jeans for formal affairs. Now, they can’t seem to get their sons into them. While some girls also eschew jeans, it is a particularly comic phenomenon that part of a generation of boys — reared by dads raised in Sears Toughskins and in an era in which tightly woven Carhartts became a fashion trend — won’t do denim.
Jeans are too uncomfortable, these boys complain. They’re stiff, itchy and just too tight. Instead, as their parents wince, the boys demand pants that are baggy and easy to pull on.
Pleas for help roll into various parenting blogs.
A forum topic on babycenter.com is titled, “Do any of your kids hate jeans?” One parent responded: “My son is 10. Hates jeans. Like seriously refuses to wear them.”
On netmums.com, one mother wrote: “My 2.5 year old hates wearing jeans. He was never keen on them, but he now screams murder as soon as he sees me coming with jeans.”
Many families experiencing denim rejection have a nickname for nondungarees that their boys adore: swish-swash pants, slippery pants, slicks or soft pants. These pants proliferate on the racks at Target, Old Navy and Baby Gap. They need frequent replacement as they fray at the hems, succumb to tears in the knee area or show other signs of wear.
Marina Lansdown, who lives on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, said that her three sons wear only track pants and sweats. “It’s driving me insane, ” she said.
When the family goes out to dinner, she can sometimes compel the boys, ages 6, 8 and 10, to put on corduroys. “I don’t want you to look like you just came off the basketball court,” she said she tells them.
Laurel Howe of New Canaan, Conn., said that her 11-year-old son wore khakis and a collared shirt to school most days. Then in fourth grade, a friend asked him why he always wore church clothes to school.
It’s been track pants ever since, said Ms. Howe, who said the entire middle school is suffering from an anti-jeans epidemic.
Designers of boys clothing are trying to help by creating sweats and track pants for boys that look more fancy and by making jeans out of more pliable, soft denim.
A few labels and retailers, like Lands’ End and H&M, offer synthetic athletic pants, some with tapered ankles, as well as sweatpants with colorful trim and pocket linings.
New bluejean styles for boys include brushed-cotton linings, baggy cuts and stretchy denim blends or prewashed denim that feels softer. Even Sears has adapted its Toughskins line, adding knits and styles in relaxed fit or with skinny bottoms and a “jogger silhouette,” said Mike Allen, Sears’s divisional vice president for children’s apparel.
Jeans are still a top seller at MiniBoden, the children’s collection from Boden USA. But to please picky customers, the company has integrated more designs with elasticized waistbands, said Theo Ford, who runs boys’ wear design for the company. Over the past couple of seasons, designers have tweaked track pants, also a big seller, to make them roomier, he said. And the company plans to expand its fleece pants line.
Focus groups informed designers at J. Crew’s Crewcuts line that boys prefer lighter-weight fabrics, so the company is gussying up track pants to appease boys and parents. Boys’ sweatpants are pegged toward the ankles and can be paired with a matching track jacket for an urbane look. Cargo pants come in a softer fabric and are slimmer through the legs than past designs.
“We’ve been working our way toward the most comfortable pants possible while still being something they can wear to school,” said Jenny Cooper, the head of design at Crewcuts, whose own 9-year-old son has declared a war on denim.
Older boys tend to outgrow bluejean aversion. Patty Ward’s 12-year-old son recently decided he would succumb to jeans, as other boys his age were doing. But the moment he walks in the door after school, he takes them off and lounges around their Chicago home in his boxer briefs.
“In hindsight, the soft-pants stage wasn’t so bad,” Ms. Ward said.
A version of this article appears in print on March 12, 2015, on page D5 of the New York edition with the headline: Jeans? Some Boys Shout, ‘No Way!’.
www.nytimes.com/2015/03/12/fashion/jeans-some-boys-shout-no-way.html?ref=fashion&_r=0
I'm kind of wondering why there was no mention of SPD anywhere in this piece. When DS's psych used to get called in my districts to observe kids who might be on spectrum, he could generally guess it was the kid in the sweat pants and Velcro character sneakers.
