In menswear circles, there is no topic more hotly debated or endlessly vexing than pants. What is it about trousers, jeans, and even their friskier cousin—shorts!—that boggles the mind and scrambles the senses? We wear them everyday, we all own countless pairs, and yet no one can seem to come to any consensus about how they should actually fit or explain why so many people’s pants just look plain bad.
It’s even harder to make sense of the current pants moment in this polarized era of…

