Apr 28, 2015

Are Your Trousers Too Long or Short? You Might Need Tailoring

It’s the unmistakable sign of a middling fashion sense: clothes that don’t quite fit. Even if you think you’re buying the right pants, the right suits, and the right button-downs, you’d be surprised at how disheveled your look can be until you've corrected perhaps the most fundamental aspect of what makes good clothing look good when actually worn: proper fit. Are your trousers too long, too short, or is there some other fitting issue? Find out what to do about it in this article.

Trouser Length

The length of your trousers is one of the most obvious things about them when you first put them on. If they fit perfectly around the waist, your journey to proper-fitting trousers isn't finished: you should be able to tell if they’re too long or too short based on how they fall around the ankle and foot. In short, the bottom hem of your pants shouldn't be too high or too low, but “just right.”

Too high usually means your trousers expose too much ankle even when you’re standing up; when you bend the knee, you’re likely showing so much of your sock that you wish you’d worn a longer pair.
Too low these days refers to a bottom hem that hits the shoe and billows, which is a fancy way of saying that it wrinkles up. If any part of your pants hits the ground when you’re standing up, they’re definitely too long.

The Waist

When you put on a new pair of pants, you know right away how well it fits at the waist. It’s either too loose—requiring a belt if you want it to stay up—or too tight to even cinch around the waist. Once again, you’re looking for the right middle-ground here: you want the pants to be tight enough to stand around your waist without the assistance of a belt, but not so tight that it restricts comfort.

The idea of wearing pants that don’t require a belt often makes people wonder why one should invest in a belt in the first place. But belts serve a practical as well as aesthetic function, pulling an outfit together in more than one way. Simply because a pair of pants can stay up without a belt doesn't always mean you should skip one.

The Legs

Finally, you’ll find this one largely to be an issue of comfort, though some stylistic considerations exist as well. You don’t want the legs to be so wide that they billow and wrinkle; you don’t want them to be so tight that you can’t sit down, either. Generally, if your pant fabric is so loose that you can pinch a wide swath of it away from your legs with your fingers, you can “size down” when it comes to the pant legs.

Berle Tailored Trousers Offer The Perfect Fit

How can you secure a tailored pair of trousers for yourself? Be sure to check out the Berle Tailored Trousers section. When ordering online from us, you can enter your exact measurements and even select complimentary hemming!