I may have mentioned before that Mr. C has half-jokingly said more than once that maybe he should take a cheap flight to Stockholm to buy some trousers that fit. Because he’s far enough outside the norm here, needing only like a 44/34 now, that it’s been proving harder than it should. (Larger waistband and inseam both on the same garment? Tricky where average male height is like 5’7" and people tend toward way smaller frames than either of ours.) He had much better luck finding things that worked just at Target or similar when Previous Job kept sending him to the US, but that’s been a while now.

Anyway, he did end up with at least one day free in Stockholm on his way to Helsinki for Worldcon. And, running pretty low on pants that didn’t have holes in them, he took the opportunity to buy a couple of pairs while he was back home!

Spoiler: they really really don’t fit better 😦

The ones he set off in for another work trip this morning looked even more uncomfortably tight than the new pair I’d already seen. The two-tone effect on these really did not help visually, though.

They also illustrate one major problem: relaxed cuts are just not in now. And that’s really suboptimal for Mr. Burly Viking here. (And not just him, I’m sure.)

I didn’t say anything about either pair, as seriously as anything I could think of failed the “is this helpful?” test. Yeah, he is no doubt extremely aware that those pants are tight. He’s the one who bought and is wearing them, on his own body. As the best he could find in a pinch, but still.

I really didn’t fall for him because of his fashion sense, which is his business. But, those new pants just do not look comfortable at all–besides terrible on.

So, I’m going ahead and looking for some different options now, on the basis that more hopefully better-fitting pants probably wouldn’t be unwelcome when he is basically down to those two new pairs for now 😵 I mean, I try extra-hard not to be intrusive with stuff like that, unlike my mother, and may well err toward the other side sometimes with boundaries. (Like with that hair matting incident, yeah.) But, it does seem like he really could use some help finding more clothes now.

Trying one strategy I’d considered before, to hopefully address some specific fit problems: clothing designed with larger thighs in mind. He may not have been working out much for a while now–and was never that seriously into it– but he basically has a power lifter’s legs by default.

Directly leading to the more recent persistent problem with ripping the seats out of his britches because they don’t have enough thigh room, yeah. Which I wouldn’t have thought of as a reason for trouser malfunctions, with pretty much the opposite fit issue here, until he mentioned it. *wry smile*

But, they make clothes for this. It’s one hell of a note when even basic cargo/outdoors type pants (which he started wearing largely for the more relaxed cuts) have gotten slimmer enough cut that this has even turned into a problem.

What I’ve seen so far aimed at athletes have mostly not been much if any more expensive than he’s been paying at Orvis for pants that last maybe a couple of months before the seat goes. And less than that after a repair. (He’s been fixing them a lot, which is only a stopgap measure besides aggravating. Only works so many times, too, without resorting to big ugly patches.)

Not to mention these newest Horrible Trousers from Haglöfs, which don’t actually have prices listed on their site but couldn’t have been cheap for that appalling fit. No idea about durability yet, but jfc those are bad enough already.

Even if the specialist fit ones were twice the price, it would be totally worth it though. Here’s hoping I can find some that do work better. And that he won’t mind the intrusion that much, considering the trouble he’s been having finding suitable ones on his own.