How Jeans Should Fit: Why Everything You Know About Sizing Is Wrong

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Understanding Fit vs. Style: The Basics

The most vital thing we must understand is that there is fit and there is style. These two terms are often conflated, but to understand style, you must first understand fit – the black-and-white, yes and no decision, the only real thing we can say objectively.

Some pants are so tight I’m afraid I’ll explode. Some pants are so loose I could go spelunking inside of them. Style, the subjective fit – super wide pants, super skinny, bell bottoms, boot cut, straight fit.

We shan’t not understand style until we understand fit! My goal for today is to teach you how to get a perfect-fitting pair of jeans. I have come up with many rules over the years that I think will help you, so let’s go understand how jeans should fit.

Starting with Measurements: The Right Way

A lot of people will say to measure your favorite fitting pair of pants and start from there. You can do that. I think we need to start at Where it All Began – your hips.

So we’re actually going to start at the waist, obviously. You need to take your pants off and then take your shirt off or lift your shirt up so you can expose the soft underbelly flesh below and wrap it around your natural waist just snug enough.

That is the general number you can look at when you’re looking at waist sizes of pants, but don’t automatically assume, “I’m a 30, that means I’m a size 30.” Look at the size chart immediately on any site.

The Truth About Sizing Between Brands

I also see a lot of people saying you only need to get this measurement once. That is also not true – you should take this measurement literally every time you are buying pants. Now, the problem begins here when you’re measuring your favorite pair of pants.

For example, if I have two pairs of Levi’s, one is a size 29, and one is a size 30. The measurement across the front of the 29s is 13.75 inches, and the measurement across the 30 is exactly 15 inches. So the 29s are technically like a 28, maybe even a 27 to some brands, and the other jeans are more authentic 30s.

Key Fit Aspects Summerized

Why “Size Down” Is Terrible Advice

Now, there is a common piece of advice given when people are buying jeans, whether they’re fancy or cheap: that you should size down one to two sizes. That is, I’m sorry to offend you, poopy caca advice.

I hear a lot of people say that, and they’ll argue very strongly about it. What is happening is you are introducing tension to your jeans, and tension is the enemy of all good fits.

Whether you like super skinny fits or super loose fits – tension is no good. When you buy pants that are too tight, they will eventually fit, you’ll be able to button them, and you’ll be able to walk around, but they will make your legs sore as you walk, and the worst part is when you wash your pants, you have to do it all over again, and it just gets so tiring, and then eventually you’ll realize all those little bits of tension don’t look too good.

The Top Block: Where the Magic Happens

We’re actually not going to measure the entire jeans. We’re going to focus on the top block, but the hardest part to measure is the thigh because there’s not a lot of consistency between manufacturers.

So you always have to look up where the manufacturer is measuring the thigh. It’s a disaster for consistency.

You could also measure the rise of your pants, but chances are, if you’re a guy, for whatever size you’re around, it’s going to be pretty standard.

If you are not a guy and you wear women’s pants, it is very important to measure it, but for most men, 11 or 12, depending on your size. I like higher rises. I think it looks better, and I have a very long torso, so if you have a long torso, you probably want a higher rise.

The final thing to note is that even if you measure yourself, you measure your favorite pair of jeans perfectly, you match them up onto a website perfectly – all manufacturers of clothing products have tolerances.

It could be a quarter of an inch. It could be more, it could be less, usually depending on how much you pay for the jeans. So even if you get the exact same pair of jeans, they may fit slightly differently, and sometimes the cheaper brands are a lot different.

The top block (the part of the jeans that isn’t the legs, basically) is where all of the evidence is as to whether you are wearing a good-fitting pair of jeans or a bad-fitting pair of jeans. The goal of clothes is to let them do a lot of the work to make you look very good, so our job is to make the top block’s job as easy as possible, and we can do that by releasing all the tension on the top block.

That is from the skinniest of fits to the tightest of fits – the top block has to look perfect. The perfect-fitting pair of jeans should have you constantly questioning whether you need a belt or not. They should be floating – too loose, obviously, you think, “I put a phone in my pocket, I need a belt.” If they’re too tight, they hold up no matter what. There’s no chance that you need a belt, no matter what you’re putting in your pocket.

The Palm Test: Your First Fit Check

The first test to see how jeans should fit is pretty easy – it’s called the Palm test. Can you take the palm of your hand and shove it into your pants without looking like someone else is shoving their hands into your pants? AKA without really just buckling back and sucking in.

So on pants that are too tight, I would have to pull the waistband out and suck my gut in a little bit, weird, and look like someone else is trying to do this to me. Now, if the pants are slightly too big, I can slide a palm in them, but then, I could slide a whole other palm in there.

Finding Tension Points: The Real Signs

What we’re looking to do is to relieve all tension across the top block, but we have to figure out where that tension is. There are a lot of different things that you can use to do this. I found a lemon works the best, so you’re going to take the lemon but don’t cut it.

Okay, obviously, I’m just kidding. To actually find the tension points, we’ll need a tomato. Got you again! What you’re actually looking for is the fruit of your pants – it is the buttons or the fasteners that are on your jeans. It’s a little harder to see with zippers because they’ll give a bit more of an even tension, but if you have a buttoned pair of jeans, it’s incredibly obvious when you look at the fly because you’ll notice two things.

Number one, you just have tension marks. The buttons obviously don’t take up the entire amount of fabric, so when they’re too tight, that little small area is pulling that fabric too hard, and you’ll start to see ridges or tension there.

The other obvious thing in pants will just be that the fly flap that’s hiding the buttons will start to open because the fabric under it is being pulled too hard and kind of exposing itself to the world. However, if you have a zipper fly, a button fly, a velcro fly, or whatever, it doesn’t matter because the top button will reveal everything.

When we look at this button on a pair of pants that’s too tight, you will see that the top part of the jeans is folding over. The reason it’s folding over is because the button is pulling so tight that a little indent is created, which makes it easier for that part of the jeans to fold.

So when I bend down, it flips over, and that’s not 100% of the reason why it’s caused – it could just be your stomach’s hanging over, it could be for a million different reasons, but the easiest way to see the tension in your jeans is right at that area.

The Perfect Fit Doesn’t Exist (But Here’s What to Do)

Now, to be totally honest, it’s kind of impossible to get that perfect pair of tensionless jeans because your weight is going to fluctuate every single day. If you can nail the top block fit on your jeans, chances are everything else will fall into place.

All of a sudden, you can play with skinny fits, straight fits, wide fits, boot cut, whatever you may want to try, unless you don’t fit the mold – you have really big thighs or really big calves or something like that, then you kind of have to work a little bit harder introducing Frankenjeans. And then, finally, what do you do if no jeans ever look good?

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The Last Resort: Franken-jeans and Tailoring

The first way to do this, the Frankenfind, is kind of the brute force method – that’s actually essentially not the brute force method. It’s a little bit more tactical, but it’s laborious. So what you have to do is say, okay, this is my waist size, and then you have to find a lot of jeans that fit you well, or you can measure and say eight inches is too small.

I need to go to ten, I need to go to 12. Break jeans down into different areas – so you have the calves, you have the thigh, you have the top block, everything like that. These are the size calves that I like, these are the size thighs that I like, and this is my waist size. So, you could probably find a fit there at Levi’s, or you can look at every single brand’s measurements and see what will fit you correctly.

But if you are someone that I know who probably doesn’t want to be named – nothing fits, and everything just looks wrong. But they fixed it, and this is how: tailoring. They just get their jeans tailored, and that’s it. They get them a little too big in the waist, but they fit the rest of their leg perfectly. They go to a tailor, and they say, “Can you take in the waist?” and then I’m telling you, I have seen their butt in jeans, and I’ve never seen jeans look so good.

Thanks for reading all about how jeans should fit! See y’all next time!

This article was adapted from Michael Kristy’s video on The Iron Snail, with edits from FashionBeans, and was reviewed by Michael to ensure the integrity of his original content. Watch the full video here.

The Iron Snail is a men’s fashion vlog (and now article series!) starring a young man named Michael and featuring a snail no bigger than a quarter. The two are set on taking over the world of fashion by creating a clothing line to end all clothing lines. Until then, we’re here to tell you EVERYTHING you need to know about the best clothing out there, from the highest quality raw denim jeans to the warmest jackets to the sturdiest boots…the Iron Snail has got you covered.