Originally Posted by
dmworking
First of all: FINALLY, a question in my wheelhouse. I work at an investment banking firm, and have 44" hips/seat to go along with my 32" waist. I struggled through my own journey of discovery to finally look presentable in a business setting, INCLUDING (I'm not proud of this) shopping for women's jeans. They didn't work. I'm excited for an opportunity to actually contribute more to this board than a snotty-but-accurate assessment of Kyle Schuant's poor business advice and the occasional jab at atb5161's CrossFit boner.
No, you don't "have to buy pleated pants," unless there is a person literally holding you hostage at Macy's swiping your credit card on a pair of Dockers. Pleated pants are a scourge and a menace, and the only reason they seem to "fit" a person with larger...ahem...assets is because their futuristic design ensures that they fit everybody the same (that is, poorly). If you're a pants manufacturer catering to the mass market, you want to be able to put your pants on as many people as possible, so it doesn't help you to be more specific in your fit design. You'll notice the pleats are on the front of the pants, rather than in a position that would actually allow for increased volume or movement (like the seat or the thighs).
Put simply, pleats are a lie, and a hideous one at that. The reason the flat fronts you've tried don't fit you is because they don't fit you, not because they're flat fronts. You're an excellent candidate for buying a pair of pants and having them fitted, since you're only taking them from a 38 down to a 36. If you had a bigger discrepancy, like say buying 36" pants to fit a 31" waist and some gargantuan thighs, well, you poor fuckers need to buy custom-fit pants or just wear a muumuu, I can't help you.
How do you get your pants tailored? Great question! I've had some success getting my pants tailored in two visits, instead of one. First visit I go and have the seat let out and the waist taken in, and tell them to NOT TOUCH THE GODDAMN HEMS. On the second visit, if the hip area has been accurately fitted, THEN I tell them to hem the bottoms (full break, obviously). I split it into two steps because whatever length they mark for the hem at the same time they're doing the top adjustments will NO LONGER BE THE RIGHT MARK after the adjustments are complete, and once your pant legs are too short, you're out of luck. I have had too many nice pairs of slacks ruined trying to do this all in one step. Life is too short to walk around in slacks that are too short, especially when your greater butt and thigh mass lifts the pant legs even higher when you walk and you end up looking like you're wearing highwaters to a client meeting.
3-4 months? Jesus Christ, what do you do in these pants? You said you work at a bank, are you working at a bank practicing scissor kicks for your synchronized swimming routine? My inner thighs haven't seen daylight since about 2011, and it takes me about a year to start seeing a threadbare grundle.
Beside the point. I'm here to help. I reinforce the grundle of my slacks after it starts to wear, but before it gets too threadbare to patch. Well, I don't, my tailor does. But for $10-15, it doubles the life of my slacks.
Also, what kind of slacks are you buying? I have a preferred brand, both for more casual khakis and for dressier wool slacks. Ready? Kirkland brand. FROM COSTCO. NO, I HAVEN'T LOST MY MIND. My tailor agrees that the quality of the material is comparable to the slacks I used to get during the Nordstrom half-yearly sale for ~$130, except at Costco, they only cost $49. And the khakis are something like $29. The difference is in the cost structure of developing and distributing the goods, as well as in the manufacturing tolerance of the creation of the pants--which you don't care about, because you're getting them tailored anyways! Trust me, this is an awesome deal.
BONUS UPPER BODY SECTION: Now that you're looking fly as hell in your $65-70 pants-plus-tailoring fitted flat-front dress slacks, you're gonna need a nice button-down to go with it. If you're like most athletes, you have a fairly large discrepancy between your shoulder/chest girth and your waist size, which is not reflected in the cut of most dress shirts. This means that if you're buying shirts with broad enough shoulders, you're left with an extra couple square feet of fabric around your waist that everyone seems to think they can just tuck into their pants. Spoiler alert: you can't.
Aside from buying tailored shirts, which are pretty expensive and I've never thought were worth the money, you can get shirts with a 5" drop (instead of the more standard 0-2") from Nordstrom Rack. They're either marketed as Nordstrom Trim Fit or Rack Trim Fit, and they run $25-30 for a shirt IDENTICAL to the shirts that go for $50-70 at a Nordstrom. You'd be amazed how much better of a fit you get from taking a few inches out of the waist of a shirt.
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