Sweatpants: a DIY

Once it became clear, in late summer, that I was going to be confined mostly to home for the foreseeable future, I invested heavily in comfy pants. Tunics and leggings had their moment last spring, but I wanted, once in a while, to be able to wear a shirt of a normal length while lounging around the house. So a shopping spree ensued. I ended up with 5 secondhand pairs of sweat/lounge pants, which, being secondhand, were mostly of a somewhat dated straight-leg cut. Something had to be done.

It seems like it was only yesterday that I converted my first pair of straight-leg sweatpants into what was, at that time, a trendy pair of joggers.

These days, it only takes a quick perusal of Tik Tok or Instagram to show that joggers are no longer trendy. If you're going to be wearing sweats, they had better be the baggy kind with elastic cuffs—the very kind I loathed as a youngster and hoped never to wear again.

Alas, even an Unfashionista cannot resist the siren song of cultural relevance, so I had to bite the bullet and commit to the trendiest ugly silhouette of 2020.

And thus, I began the conversion of my too-short straight-leg pink pair of sweats into the bottom-cuff kind.

I checked to see whether I'd like the alteration by safety-pinning one leg in an approximation of the altered effect. It was a go!

 

Then I opened up a hole in the side seam at the bottom hem, threaded in a strip of elastic about the circumference of the bottom of my calf, and sewed it all back up! 

 

Instant modernity!

A second perusal of Instagram or Tik Tok quickly reveals that the preferred pairings with this type of sweatpants are either a matching sweatshirt or an ultra-cropped top of almost any sort. I made a valiant effort to follow the trend, wearing my new sweats for the first time with a cute crop top that I've had for almost 2 years and never worn.

The reason for the delay, of course, is that whenever it's cold enough to wear long sleeves, it's too cold to be showing one's midriff! I'll sacrifice my taste in the name of fashion, but never my body heat! I'd originally thought I might be able to wear the top to some event where crowds of humans would render the air warm enough that I'd be able to get away with uncovering my most thermally critical body part. But as crowds are out of the question for at least the remainder of this winter, I finally decided to give up on the impractical top.

After the hurried photo shoot (the brrr explains the blur!), I relegated it to the to-sell pile and traded it in for a less fashionable but more comfortable long-sleeved tee that completely covered me in blessed warmth.

Flashback Friday

 

Every day is casual day when you're working from home, but I'm still trying to give my workday outfits a more professional spin...from the shoulders up! That means collared shirts and nice sweaters when the weather's cold. But I still reserve my more fun outfits for Fridays, and that means this jacket! I don't think I'd wear this jacket to a normal physical office any day—mainly because it's got a casual vibe and it's so festive that I'd want to reserve it for a more special occasion. In fact, I'm almost sure I did wear it for at least three special occasions, but I never got a photo. In fact, I think of it as my bad luck karaoke shirt because two of the occasions involved karaoke that never happened. So by this time, it has diminished in novelty enough that wearing it for work seemed more reasonable...especially when "work" means "home," and the only thing people would see of it was the top 3 inches or so.

I was all set to wear it with a pair of pink sweatpants when I realized the pants would be much improved with a little alteration (stay tuned for a future post on this change and on all things sweatpants-related!). I found a decent pair of backup pants in my closet, and planned to sew the sweatpants during a webinar in the morning, so I'd have the outfit ready to wear through most of the afternoon.

Then I looked at myself in the mirror. In my vintage cargo pants and midriff-baring jacket, I was the spitting image of a turn-of-the-millennium fashionista! It just so happens that 90's bang tendrils have made a resurgence, and it just so happens that my growing-out fringe is the perfect length to pull them off! So I decided to go full-on retro.

A throwback look is probably not as cool if you're old enough to have actually rocked those styles the first time around...and bang tendrils not as cool when you have such wispy hair as mine, but I still had fun with it.